Related papers: Relationships between braid length and the number …

The concordance genus of a knot K is the minimum Seifert genus of all knots smoothly concordant to K. Concordance genus is bounded below by the 4-ball genus and above by the Seifert genus. We give a lower bound for the concordance genus of…

It has been suggested recently that knots might exist as stable soliton solutions in a simple three-dimensional classical field theory, opening up a wide range of possible applications in physics and beyond. We have re-examined and extended…

We count the n-strand braids whose normal decomposition has length at most two in the dual braid monoid B_n+* by reducing the question to a computation of free cumulants for a product of independent variables, for which we establish a…

We present a new procedure to determine the growth function of a homogeneous Garside monoid, with respect to the finite generating set formed by the atoms. In particular, we present a formula for the growth function of each Artin--Tits…

We show that the proportion of hyperbolic knots among all of the prime knots of $n$ or fewer crossings does not converge to $1$ as $n$ approaches infinity. Moreover, we show that if $K$ is a nontrivial knot then the proportion of satellites…

This note tells you how to construct a k(n)-dimensional family of (isomorphism classes of) irreducible representations of dimension n for the three string braid group B_3, where k(n) is an admissible function of your choosing; for example…

Let $\beta:=\sigma_1\sigma_2^{-1}$ be a braid in $B_3$, where $B_3$ is the braid group on 3 strings and $\sigma_1, \sigma_2$ are the standard Artin generators. We use Gauss diagram formulas to show that for each natural number $n$ not…

We have developed a reinforcement learning agent that often finds a minimal sequence of unknotting crossing changes for a knot diagram with up to 200 crossings, hence giving an upper bound on the unknotting number. We have used this to…

For a torus knot K, we bound the crosscap number c(K) in terms of the genus g(K) and crossing number n(K): c(K) \leq [(g(K)+9)/6] and c(K) \leq [(n(K) + 16)/12]. The (6n-2,3) torus knots show that these bounds are sharp.

We estimate from above the set of knots, $\Omega(n,\mu)$, generated by closure of n-string 1+1- and 2+1-dimensional braids of irreducible length $\mu$ ($\mu>>1$) in the limit n>>1.

For a knot K, the concordance crosscap number, c(K), is the minimum crosscap number among all knots concordant to K. Building on work of G. Zhang, which studied the determinants of knots with c(K) < 2, we apply the Alexander polynomial to…

We use Heegaard Floer homology to give obstructions to unknotting a knot with a single crossing change. These restrictions are particularly useful in the case where the knot in question is alternating. As an example, we use them to classify…

A knot k is called ``strongly (n-1)-trivial.'' if there exists a projection of k, such that one can choose n crossings of the projection with the property that making the crossing changes corresponding to any of the $2^{n}-1$ nontrivial…

Ribbon concordances between knots generalize the notion of ribbon knots. Agol, building on work of Gordon, proved ribbon concordance gives a partial order on knots in $S^3$. In previous work, the author and Greene conjectured that positive…

It is a very old conjecture that the crossing number of knots is additive under connected sum. In other words, if K#K' is the connected sum of knots K and K', then does the equality c(K#K') = c(K) + c(K') hold? We prove that c(K#K') is at…

We describe rational knots with any of the possible combinations of the properties (a)chirality, (non-)positivity, (non-)fiberedness, and unknotting number one (or higher), and determine exactly their number for a given number of crossings…

We classify all knot diagrams of genus two and three, and give applications to positive, alternating and homogeneous knots, including a classification of achiral genus 2 alternating knots, slice or achiral 2-almost positive knots, a proof…

Let $\alpha$ be a map from the set of all knot types ${\mathcal K}$ to a set $X$. Let $\beta$ be a map from ${\mathcal K}$ to a set $Y$. We define the relation between $\alpha$ and $\beta$ to be the image of a map $(\alpha,\beta)$ from…

Braids can be represented geometrically as curve diagrams. The geometric complexity of a braid is the minimal complexity of a curve diagram representing it. We introduce and study the corresponding notion of geometric generating function.…

Musical gestures connect the symbolic layer of the score to the physical layer of sound. I focus here on the mathematical theory of musical gestures, and I propose its generalization to include braids and knots. In this way, it is possible…