Related papers: Thin position in the theory of classical knots
We unify the notions of thin position for knots and for 3-manifolds and survey recent work concerning these notions.
This is a short expository article on alternating knots and is to appear in the Concise Encyclopedia of Knot Theory.
In math.GT/0106017 it was shown that thin position on Heegaard spines can be a useful tool for analyzing the topology of knots in 3-space. The proof there (specifically, of the Goda-Teragaito conjecture) requires masses of technical detail;…
This paper is a very brief introduction to knot theory. It describes knot coloring by quandles, the fundamental group of a knot complement, and handle-decompositions of knot complements.
Let k be a knot in S3. In [8], H.N. Howards and J. Schultens introduced a method to construct a manifold decomposition of double branched cover of (S3, k) from a thin position of k. In this article, we will prove that if a thin position of…
Withdrawn and replaced by two related manuscripts: (1) "Stabilization in the braid groups I:MTWS", published in Geometry and Topology Volume 10 (2006), 413-540, arXiv:math.GT/0310279, and (2) "Stabilization in the braid groups II:…
We define a new notion of thin position for a graph in a 3-manifold which combines the ideas of thin position for manifolds first originated by Scharlemann and Thompson with the idea of thin position for knots first originated by Gabai.…
We give a method for searching for thin positions of a given link.
Abby Thompson proved that if a link $K$ is in thin position but not in bridge position then the knot complement contains an essential meridional planar surface, and she asked whether some thin level surface must be essential. This note is…
This survey of some of the more topological aspects of the placement problem for complex curves in complex surfaces was originally published in L'Enseignement Mathematique 29 (1983). The present LaTeXed redaction corrects several…
This paper is a review of the book "Knots" by Alexei Sossinsky. The review includes a short personal history of knot theory at the end of the twentieth century.
Thin position for knots in the 3-sphere was introduced by Gabai and has been used in a variety of contexts. We conjecture an analogue to a theorem of Schubert and Schultens concerning the bridge number of satellite knots. For a satellite…
Motivated by M. Scharlemann and A. Thompson's definition of thin position of 3-manifolds, we define the width of a handle decomposition a 4-manifold and introduce the notion of thin position of a compact smooth 4-manifold. We determine all…
We review recent developments in the theory of Thompson group representations related to knot theory.
We give a new proof of Markov's classical theorem relating any two closed braid representations of the same knot or link. The proof is based upon ideas in a forthcoming paper by the authors, "Stabilization in the braid groups". The new…
Given a class of objects, a pattern theorem is a powerful result describing their structure. We show that alternating knots exhibit a pattern theorem, and use this result to prove a long-standing conjecture that alternating knots grow rare.…
This book is a detailed introduction to the theory of finite type (Vassiliev) knot invariants, with a stress on its combinatorial aspects. It is intended to serve both as a textbook for readers with no or little background in this area, and…
An expository article on Turaev surfaces written for "A Concise Encyclopedia of Knot Theory," to appear.
After Dirac introduced the monopole, topological objects have played increasingly important roles in physics. In this review we discuss the role of the knot, the most sophisticated topological object in physics, and related topological…
We present in this chapter (Chapter II) the history of ideas which lead up to the development of modern knot theory. We are more detailed when pre-XX century history is reported. With more recent times we are more selective, stressing…