Related papers: Braids, knots and contact structures
This is the first in a series of papers where we will derive invariants of three-manifolds and framed knots in them from the geometry of a manifold pseudotriangulation put in some way in a four-dimensional Euclidean space. Thus, the…
In the spirit of Sullivan's paper "Cycles for the Dynamical Study of Foliated Manifolds and Complex Manifolds", existence of a contact structure on a closed manifold $M$ is shown to be equivalent to existence of an ample $S^1$-invariant…
The topological framework of circuit topology has recently been introduced to complement knot theory and to help in understanding the physics of molecular folding. Naturally evolved linear molecular chains, such as proteins and nucleic…
An $n$-plat 1-knot is one isotopic to the plat closure of some $2n$-braid, which is also called an $n$-bridge 1-knot. Schubert classified 2-bridge 1-knots by considering their double branched covers which are homeomorphic to lens spaces. A…
The space of n-sided polygons embedded in three-space consists of a smooth manifold in which points correspond to piecewise linear or ``geometric'' knots, while paths correspond to isotopies which preserve the geometric structure of these…
In this paper we first give a one-move version of Markov's braid theorem for knot isotopy in $S^3$ that sharpens the classical theorem. Then a relative version of Markov's theorem concerning a fixed braided portion in the knot. We also…
The main purpose of this article is to classify contact structures on some 3-manifolds, namely lens spaces, most torus bundles over a circle, the solid torus, and the thickened torus T^2 x [0,1]. This classification completes earlier work…
New explicit procedures for passing among triplane diagrams, braid movies, and braid charts for knotted surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^4$ are presented. To this end, rainbow diagrams, which lie between braid charts and triplanes, are introduced.…
Birman-Menasco proved that there are finitely many knots having a given genus and braid index. We give a quantitative version of Birman-Menasco finiteness theorem, an estimate of the crossing number of knots in terms of genus and braid…
A {\it stuck knot} is a knot diagram containing designated crossings, called {\it stuck crossings}, whose incident strands are required to remain locally non-separable. These rigidity constraints restrict the allowable ambient isotopies and…
A knot $K_1$ is said to be Gordian adjacent to a knot $K_2$ if $K_1$ is an intermediate knot on an unknotting sequence of $K_2$. We extend previous results on Gordian adjacency by showing sufficient conditions for Gordian adjacency between…
We study the geometry of interacting knotted solitons. The interaction is local and advances either as a three-body or as a four-body process, depending on the relative orientation and a degeneracy of the solitons involved. The splitting…
Early last century witnessed both the complete classification of 2-dimensional manifolds and a proof that classification of 4-dimensional manifolds is undecidable, setting up 3-dimensional manifolds as a central battleground of topology to…
We present a systematic introduction to the geometry of linear braided spaces. These are versions of $\R^n$ in which the coordinates $x_i$ have braid-statistics described by an R-matrix. From this starting point we survey the author's…
We present new families of examples of non-simple prime Legendrian and transversal knots in tight Lens spaces, which demonstrate that the botany of Legendrians in Lens space is rich. In fact, there are more non-isotopic Legendrians that are…
We solve the Jones conjecture, which states that the exponent sum in a minimal braid representation of a knot in S^3 is a knot invariant, by proving a generalized version of the original one. We apply contact geometry to study this problem…
In this paper, we study contact structures on any open 3-manifold V which is the interior of a compact 3-manifold. To do this, we introduce proper contact isotopy invariants called the slope at infinity and the division number at infinity.…
This paper investigates the relationship between the signature and the crossing number of knots and links. We refine existing theorems and provide a comprehensive classification of links with specific properties, particularly those with…
The recent proof by Bigelow and Krammer that the braid groups are linear opens the possibility of applications to the study of knots and links. It was proved by the first author and Menasco that any closed braid representative of the unknot…
We introduce new topological quantum invariants of compact oriented 3-manifolds with boundary where the boundary is a disjoint union of two identical surfaces. The invariants are constructed via surgery on manifolds of the form $F \times I$…