Related papers: Knot signature functions are independent
Many well studied knots can be realized as positive braid knots where the braid word contains a positive full twist; we say that such knots are twist positive. Some important families of knots are twist positive, including torus knots,…
We describe a procedure that creates an explicit complex-valued polynomial function of three-dimensional space, whose nodal lines are the three-twist knot $5_2$. The construction generalizes a similar approach for lemniscate knots: a braid…
We provide linear lower bounds for the signature of positive braids in terms of the three genus of their braid closure. This yields linear bounds for the topological slice genus of knots that arise as closures of positive braids.
To a univariate monic polynomial is attached a special planar forest that is called the picture of the polynomial. Isotopy classes of pictures are called signatures. All combinatorially possible signatures are realized and spaces of…
Several classical knot invariants, such as the Alexander polynomial, the Levine-Tristram signature and the Blanchfield pairing, admit natural extensions from knots to links, and more generally, from oriented links to so-called colored…
Given a link L in the 3-sphere, we ask whether the components of L bound disjoint, nullhomologous disks properly embedded in a simply-connected positive-definite smooth 4-manifold; the knot case has been studied extensively in work of…
Any knot group is the image of the group of a prime knot by a homomorphism that preserves peripheral structure. In fact, there are infinitely many such prime knots. A related partial order on knots is defined, and its properties are…
The existence of topologically slice knots that are of infinite order in the knot concordance group followed from Freedman's work on topological surgery and Donaldson's gauge theoretic approach to 4-manifolds. Here, as an application of…
We give necessary and sufficient conditions for an integer to be the signature of a (4q-1)-knot in the (4q+1)-sphere with a given square-free Alexander polynomial.
In [BF12] the authors associated to a knot K an invariant n_R(K) which is defined using the Blanchfield form and which gives a lower bound on the unknotting number. In this paper we express n_R(K) in terms of Levine-Tristram signatures and…
For any knot, the following are equivalent. (1) The infinite cyclic cover has uncountably many finite covers; (2) there exists a finite-image representation of the knot group for which the twisted Alexander polynomial vanishes; (3) the knot…
Empirical analysis of many colored knot polynomials, made possible by recent computational advances in Chern-Simons theory, reveals their stability: for any given negative N and any given knot the set of coefficients of the polynomial in…
We use the famous knot-theoretic consequence of Freedman's disc theorem---knots with trivial Alexander polynomial bound a locally-flat disc in the 4-ball---to prove the following generalization. The degree of the Alexander polynomial of a…
A knot in $S^3$ is rationally slice if it bounds a disk in a rational homology ball. We give an infinite family of rationally slice knots that are linearly independent in the knot concordance group. In particular, our examples are all…
This paper contains linear systems of equations which can distinguish knots without knot invariants. Let $M_n$ be the topological moduli space of all n-component string links and such that a fixed projection into the plane is an immersion.…
A regular $n$-gon inscribing a knot is a sequence of $n$ points on a knot, such that the distances between adjacent points are all the same. It is shown that any smooth knot is inscribed by a regular $n$-gon for any $n$.
We show that the difference between the topological 4-genus of a knot and the minimal genus of a surface bounded by that knot that can be decomposed into a smooth concordance followed by an algebraically simple locally flat surface can be…
In this paper we investigate the Alexander polynomial of (1,1)-knots, which are knots lying in a 3-manifold with genus one at most, admitting a particular decomposition. More precisely, we study the connections between the Alexander…
Fox conjectured the Alexander polynomial of an alternating knot is trapezoidal, i.e. the coefficients first increase, then stabilize and finally decrease in a symmetric way. Recently, Hirasawa and Murasugi further conjectured a relation…
In an earlier paper, we introduced a knot invariant for a null-homologous knot K in an oriented three-manifold Y, which is closely related to the Heegaard Floer homology of Y. In this paper we investigate some properties of these knot…