Related papers: Alternating Quadrisecants of Knots

The ropelength of a knot is the quotient of its length and its thickness, the radius of the largest embedded normal tube around the knot. We prove existence and regularity for ropelength minimizers in any knot or link type; these are…

We present two families of knots which have straight number higher than crossing number. In the case of the second family, we have computed the straight number explicitly. We also give a general theorem about alternating knots that states…

The unknotting number of a knot is bounded from below by its slice genus. It is a well-known fact that the genera and unknotting numbers of torus knots coincide. In this note we characterize quasipositive knots for which the genus bound is…

We prove that a special alternating knot does not decompose as a non-trivial band sum. This restricts concordances from special alternating knots, and we conjecture that special alternating knots are ribbon concordance minimal. We verify…

Every knot can be embedded in the union of finitely many half planes with a common boundary line in such a way that the portion of the knot in each half plane is a properly embedded arc. The minimal number of such half planes is called the…

Roberts proved that a family of alternating, arborescent, prime knots each have at least $2^{2n-1}$ distinct minimal genus Seifert surfaces, where $n$ is the genus of the knot in question. We give a subfamily of these knots that have…

We prove that if an alternating 3-braid knot has unknotting number one, then there must exist an unknotting crossing in any alternating diagram of it, and we enumerate such knots. The argument combines the obstruction to unknotting number…

A rational knot or link can be put into a standard alternating format which has horizontal and vertical twist sites (double helices). The number and type of these twist sites are determined by terms of next-to-highest $z$-degree in…

The warping degree of an oriented knot diagram is the minimal number of crossing changes which are required to obtain a monotone knot diagram from the diagram. The minimal warping degree of a knot is the minimal value of the warping degree…

It is known that the arc index of alternating knots is the minimal crossing number plus two and the arc index of prime nonalternating knots is less than or equal to the minimal crossing number. We study some cases when the arc index is…

Using elementary ideas from Tropical Geometry, we assign a a tropical curve to every $q$-holonomic sequence of rational functions. In particular, we assign a tropical curve to every knot which is determined by the Jones polynomial of the…

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…

Frequently, knots are enumerated by their crossing number. However, the number of knots with crossing number $c$ grows exponentially with $c$, and to date computer-assisted proofs can only classify diagrams up to around twenty crossings.…

We study surface knots in 4-space by using generic planar projections. These projections have fold points and cusps as their singularities and the image of the singular point set divides the plane into several regions. The width (or the…

We present a conjecture for the power-law exponent in the asymptotic number of types of plane curves as the number of self-intersections goes to infinity. In view of the description of prime alternating links as flype equivalence classes of…

In this paper we present a sequence of link invariants, defined from twisted Alexander polynomials, and discuss their effectiveness in distinguish knots. In particular, we recast and extend by geometric means a recent result of Silver and…

We show that the triple-crossing number of any knot is greater or equal to twice its (canonical) genus and we show an even stronger bound in the case of links. As an application we show that this bound is strong enough to obtain the…

If a knot has the Alexander polynomial not equal to 1, then it is linear $n$-colorable. By means of such a coloring, such a knot is given an upper bound for the minimal quandle order, i.e., the minimal order of a quandle with which the knot…

Using the techniques on annulus twists, we observe that $6_3$ has infinitely many non-characterizing slopes, which affirmatively answers a question by Baker and Motegi. Furthermore, we prove that the knots $6_2$, $6_3$, $7_6$, $7_7$, $8_1$,…

This is the first in a series of four papers wherein we enumerate all prime alternating knots and links. In this first paper, we introduce four operators on knots and show that, when used according to very simple rules on the prime…