Related papers: Distance and bridge position

We define the concordance crosscap number of a knot as the minimum crosscap number among all the knots concordant to the knot. The four-dimensional crosscap number is the minimum first Betti number of non-orientable surfaces smoothly…

An alternating distance is a link invariant that measures how far away a link is from alternating. We study several alternating distances and demonstrate that there exist families of links for which the difference between certain…

The boundary of a numerical range of a finite matrix is always a nice curve (algebraic, closed and simple), but the equation it satisfies is often very complicated. We will show that, furthermore, there is no hope of describing these curves…

We give a simple criterion for a Heegaard splitting to yield a Haken manifold. As a consequence, we construct many Haken manifolds, in particular homology spheres, with prescribed properties, namely Heegaard genus, Heegaard distance and…

Let $T$ be a graph in a compact, orientable 3--manifold $M$ and let $\Gamma$ be a subgraph. $T$ can be placed in bridge position with respect to a Heegaard surface $H$. We show that if $H$ is what we call $(T,\Gamma)$-c-weakly reducible in…

We describe some of the algebra underlying the decomposition of planar grid diagrams. This provides a useful toy model for an extension of Heegaard Floer homology to 3-manifolds with parametrized boundary. This paper is meant to serve as a…

The paper provides bounds for the ropelength of a link in terms of the crossing numbers of its split components. As in earlier papers, the bounds grow with the square of the crossing number; however, the constant involved is a substantial…

We give a definition of thickness in $\mathbb{R}^d$ that is useful even for totally disconnected sets, and prove a Gap Lemma type result. We also guarantee an interval of distances in any direction in thick compact sets, relate thick sets…

For each three-bridge link of a certain form, we construct a taut Seifert surface for the link and establish whether the link is fibred. Using this, we also give the genus and fibredness of satellite knots whose pattern is constructed from…

The Gordian distance between two knots measures how many crossing changes are needed to transform one knot into the other. It is known that there are always infinitely many non-equivalent knots `between' a pair of knots of Gordian distance…

The Hausdorff distance is a measure of (dis-)similarity between two sets which is widely used in various applications. Most of the applied literature is devoted to the computation for sets consisting of a finite number of points. This has…

We report on the geometry and mechanics of knotted stiff strings. We discuss both closed and open knots. Our two main results are: (i) Their equilibrium energy as well as the equilibrium tension for open knots depend on the type of knot as…

The distance matrix of a connected graph is the symmetric matrix with columns and rows indexed by the vertices and entries that are the pairwise distances between the corresponding vertices. We give a construction for graphs which differ in…

The height of a knotoid is a measure of how far it is from being a knot. Here we define the positive and negative parts of the height, and we prove that they determine the unsigned height. Some polynomial invariants provide lower bounds for…

In this article, we prove that a tunnel number two knot induces a critical Heegaard splitting in its exterior if there are two weak reducing pairs such that each weak reducing pair contains the cocore disk of each tunnel. Moreover, we prove…

We expect manifolds obtained by Dehn filling to inherit properties from the knot manifold. To what extent does that hold true for the Heegaard structure? We study four changes to the Heegaard structure that may occur after filling: (1)…

Heegaard splittings provide a natural representation of closed 3-manifolds by gluing two handlebodies along a common surface. These splittings can be equivalently given by two finite sets of meridians lying on the surface, which define a…

We show that a complete Riemannian manifold with boundary is uniquely determined, up to an isometry, by its distance difference representation on the boundary. Unlike previously known results, we do not impose any restrictions on the…

Suppose $K$ is a knot in a closed 3-manifold $M$ such that $\bar{M-N(K)}$ is irreducible. We show that for any positive integer $b$ there exists a triangulation of $\bar{M-N(K)}$ such that any weakly incompressible bridge surface for $K$ of…

We show that both Lusternik-Schnirelmann category and topological complexity are particular cases of a more general notion, that we call homotopic distance between two maps. As a consequence, several properties of those invariants can be…