Related papers: Impossibility of obtaining split links from split …

Trivial links are unique up to number of link components, but they can be hard to recognize from arbitrary diagrams. We define a new measure of the complexity of a link embedding, the crumple, and show how this may be used to measure…

We give a new geometric obstruction to the iterated Bing double of a knot being a slice link: for n>1 the (n+1)-st iterated Bing double of a knot is rationally slice if and only if the n-th iterated Bing double of the knot is rationally…

We use techniques of Freedman and Teichner to prove that, under certain circumstances, the multi-infection of a slice link is again slice (not necessarily smoothly slice). We provide a general context for proving links are slice that…

There is a question asking whether a handle-irreducible summand of every stable-ribbon surface-link is a unique ribbon surface-link. This question for the case of a trivial surface-link is affirmatively answered. That is, a…

In this paper we present a sequence of link invariants, defined from twisted Alexander polynomials, and discuss their effectiveness in distinguish knots. In particular, we recast and extend by geometric means a recent result of Silver and…

We show that the following unlinking strategy does not always yield an optimal sequence of crossing changes: first split the link with the minimal number of crossing changes, and then unknot the resulting components.

Virtual knot theory is a generalization of knot theory which is based on Gauss chord diagrams and link diagrams on closed oriented surfaces. A twisted knot is a generalization of a virtual knot, which corresponds to a link diagram on a…

We show a spectral sequence for the rational Khovanov homology of an oriented link in terms of the rational Khovanov complexes and homologies of the link surgeries along an admissible cut. As a non trivial corollary, we give an explicit…

By twisting a given link $L$ along an unknotted circle $c$, we obtain an infinite family of links $\{ L_n \}$. We introduce the ``stable unknotting number'' which describes the asymptotic behavior of unknotting numbers of links in the twist…

A knot k is called ``strongly (n-1)-trivial.'' if there exists a projection of k, such that one can choose n crossings of the projection with the property that making the crossing changes corresponding to any of the $2^{n}-1$ nontrivial…

Let $M$ be a connected, closed, oriented three-manifold and $K$, $L$ two rationally null-homologous oriented simple closed curves in $M$. We give an explicit algorithm for computing the linking number between $K$ and $L$ in terms of a…

In this paper, we extend the concept of {\it (strongly) keenness} for Heegaard splittings to bridge splittings, and show that, for any integers $g$, $b$ and $n$ with $g\ge 0$, $b\ge 1$, $n\ge 1$ except for $(g,b)=(0,1)$ and…

We give a necessary condition for a torus knot to be untied by a single twisting. By using this result, we give infinitely many torus knots that cannot be untied by a single twisting.

Given a virtual link diagram $D$, we define its unknotting index $U(D)$ to be minimum among $(m, n)$ tuples, where $m$ stands for the number of crossings virtualized and $n$ stands for the number of classical crossing changes, to obtain a…

A link in the 3-sphere is called (smoothly) slice if its components bound disjoint smoothly embedded disks in the 4-ball. More generally, given a 4-manifold M with a distinguished circle in its boundary, a link in the 3-sphere is called…

An R-link is an $n$-component link $L$ in $S^3$ such that Dehn surgery on $L$ yields $\#^n(S^1 \times S^2)$. Every R-link $L$ gives rise to a geometrically simply-connected homotopy 4-sphere $X_L$, which in turn can be used to produce a…

If L is an oriented link with $n$ components, then the rank of its Khovanov homology is at least $2^n$. We classify all the links whose Khovanov homology with Z/2-coefficients achieves this lower bound, and show that such links can be…

We use the combinatorial techniques of graphs of intersection to study reducible Dehn surgeries on knots in the three-sphere. In particular, in the event that a reducible surgery on a knot K in the three-sphere of slope r produces a…

An L-space link is a link in $S^3$ on which all sufficiently large integral surgeries are L-spaces. We prove that for m, n relatively prime, the r-component cable link $K_{rm,rn}$ is an L-space link if and only if K is an L-space knot and…

Deciding whether a family of disjoint line segments in the plane can be linked into a simple polygon (or a simple polygonal chain) by adding segments between their endpoints is NP-hard.