Related papers: The Second Hull of a Knotted Curve

We establish a new fundamental relationship between total curvature of knots and crossing number. If K is a smooth knot in 3-space, R the cross-section radius of a uniform tube neighborhood of K, L the arclength of K, and k the total…

We prove that every immersed $C^2$-curve $\gamma$ in $\mathbb R^n$, $n\geqslant 3$ with curvature $k_{\gamma}$ can be $C^1$-approximated by immersed $C^2$-curves having prescribed curvature $k>k_{\gamma}$. The approximating curves satisfy a…

Given a point set, mostly a grid in our case, we seek upper and lower bounds on the number of curves that are needed to cover the point set. We say a curve covers a point if the curve passes through the point. We consider such coverings by…

We show that smooth curves with prescribed curvature satisfy a $C^1$-dense $h$-principle in the space of immersed curves in Euclidean space. More precisely, every $C^{\alpha \geq 2}$ curve with nonvanishing curvature in $R^{n\geq 3}$ can be…

A \emph{thrackle} is a graph drawn in the plane so that every pair of its edges meet exactly once, either at a common end vertex or in a proper crossing. Conway's thrackle conjecture states that the number of edges is at most the number of…

We consider the class of curves of finite total curvature, as introduced by Milnor. This is a natural class for variational problems and geometric knot theory, and since it includes both smooth and polygonal curves, its study shows us…

Knot theory is the study of isotopy classes of embeddings of the circle $S^1$ into a 3-manifold, specifically $R^3$. The F\'ary-Milnor Theorem says that any curve in $R^3$ of total curvature less than $4\pi$ is unknotted. More generally, a…

We observe that the maximal open set of constant curvature k in a Riemannian manifold with curvature bounded below or above by k has a convexity type property, which we call "two-convexity". This statement is used to prove a number of…

In this paper we show how to realize all knot (and link) types as C^{2} smooth curves of constant curvature. Our proof is constructive: we build the knots with copies of a fixed finite number of "building blocks" that are particular…

A rectilinear drawing of a graph $G$ is optimal if it has the smallest number of crossings among all rectilinear drawings of $G$. In this paper it is shown that for $n\geq 8$, the second convex hull of every optimal rectilinear drawing of…

A non-singular connected algebraic curve $A$ in a simply connected algebraic surface $X$ can be knotted so that its homology class and the fundamental group of its complement in $X$ is preserved, provided $A$ is sufficiently complex (not…

We prove that curves of constant curvature satisfy the parametric $C^1$-dense relative $h$-principle in the space of immersed curves with nonvanishing curvature in Euclidean space $R^{n\geq 3}$. It follows that two knots of constant…

In this note, we prove the following inequality for the norm of a convex body $K$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$, $n\geq 2$: $N(K) \leq \frac{\pi^{\frac{n-1}{2}}}{2 \Gamma \left(\frac{n+1}{2}\right)}\cdot \operatorname{length} (\gamma) +…

We examine the metrics that arise when a finite set of points is embedded in the real line, in such a way that the distance between each pair of points is at least 1. These metrics are closely related to some other known metrics in the…

The thickness, NIR(K) of a knot or link K is defined to be the radius of the largest solid tube one can put around the curve without any self intersections, which is also known as the normal injectivity radius of K. For C^{1,1} curves K,…

We study the lengths of curves passing through a fixed number of points on the boundary of a convex shape in the plane. We show that for any convex shape $K$, there exist four points on the boundary of $K$ such that the length of any curve…

A quadratically constrained quadratic program (QCQP) is an optimization problem in which the objective function is a quadratic function and the feasible region is defined by quadratic constraints. Solving non-convex QCQP to global…

It is shown that there exist arcs and simple closed curves in ${\mathbb C}^3$ with nontrivial polynomial hulls that contain no analytic discs. It is also shown that in any bounded Runge domain of holomorphy in ${\mathbb C}^N$ ($N \geq 2$)…

We define a plane curve to be threadable if it can rigidly pass through a point-hole in a line L without otherwise touching L. Threadable curves are in a sense generalizations of monotone curves. We have two main results. The first is a…

We determine the relationship between the contact structure induced by a fibered knot, K, in the three-sphere and the contact structures induced by its various cables. Understanding this relationship allows us to classify fibered cable…