Related papers: Equilibrium shapes of flat knots
A polynomial knot in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is a smooth embedding of $\mathbb{R}$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$ such that the component functions are real polynomials. In the earlier paper with Mishra, we have studied the space $\mathcal{P}$ of polynomial…
Semiflexible polymer models are widely used as a paradigm to understand structural phases in biomolecules including folding of proteins. Since stable knots are not so common in real proteins, the existence of stable knots in semiflexible…
Templates are branched 2-manifolds with semi-flows used to model `chaotic' hyperbolic invariant sets of flows on 3-manifolds. Knotted orbits on a template correspond to those in the original flow. Birman and Williams conjectured that for…
It is nontrivial whether the average size of a ring polymer should become smaller or larger under a topological constraint. Making use of some knot invariants, we evaluate numerically the mean square radius of gyration for ring polymers…
This work deals with the presence of topological structures in models of two real scalar fields in the two-dimensional spacetime. The subject concerns the presence of a geometric constriction, which appears with a modification of the…
The most tight conformation of the trefoil knot found by the SONO algorithm is presented. Structure of the set of its self-contact points is analyzed.
The (isothermic) compressibility of lattice knots can be examined as a model of the effects of topology and geometry on the compressibility of ring polymers. In this paper, the compressibility of minimal length lattice knots in the simple…
We give statistical definitions of the length, l, of a loose prime knot tied into a long, fluctuating ring macromolecule. Monte Carlo results for the equilibrium, good solvent regime show that < l > ~ N^t, where N is the ring length and t ~…
We investigate morphologies of semiflexible polymer rings, such as circular DNA, which are adsorbed onto topographically or chemically structured substrate surfaces. We classify all equilibrium morphologies for two striped surface…
We use numerical simulations to study tangentially active flexible ring polymers with different knot topologies. Simple, unknotted active rings display a transition from an extended phase to a collapsed one upon increasing the degree of…
Finite-order invariants of knots in arbitrary 3-manifolds (including non-orientable ones) are constructed and studied by methods of the topology of discriminant sets. Obstructions to the integrability of admissible weight systems to…
Minimizing the bending energy within knot classes leads to the concept of elastic knots which has been initiated in [von der Mosel, Asymptot. Anal. 1998]. Motivated by numerical experiments in arxiv:1804.02206 (doi:10.1090/mcom/3633) we…
The idea that the elementary particles might have the symmetry of knots has had a long history. In any current formulation of this idea, however, the knot must be quantized. The present review is a summary of a small set of papers that…
Ring polymers are prevalent in natural and engineered systems, including circular bacterial DNA, crown ethers for cation chelation, and mechanical nanoswitches. The morphology and dynamics of ring polymers are governed by the chemistry and…
Knotted fields enrich a variety of physical phenomena, ranging from fluid flows, electromagnetic fields, to textures of ordered media. Maxwell's electrostatic equations, whose vacuum solution is mathematically known as a harmonic field,…
We study knotted polymers in equilibrium with an array of obstacles which models confinement in a gel or immersion in a melt. We find a crossover in both the geometrical and the topological behavior of the polymer. When the polymers' radius…
A veritable zoo of different knots is seen in the ensemble of looped polymer chains, whether created computationally or observed in vitro. At short loop lengths, the spectrum of knots is dominated by the trivial knot (unknot). The…
We develop purely algebraic methods for proving that a knot is prime. Our approach uses the Heegaard Floer polynomial in conjunction with classical knot-theoretic methods: cyclic, dihedral, and metacyclic covering spaces. The theory of…
This article surveys the use of configuration space integrals in the study of the topology of knot and link spaces. The main focus is the exposition of how these integrals produce finite type invariants of classical knots and links. More…
We define the knotting probability of a knot $K$ by the probability for a random polygon (RP) or self-avoiding polygon (SAP) of $N$ segments having the knot type $K$. We show fundamental and generic properties of the knotting probability…