Related papers: Properties of closed 3-braids

We construct ribbon surfaces of Euler characteristic one for several infinite families of alternating 3-braid closures. We also use a twisted Alexander polynomial obstruction to conclude the classification of smoothly slice knots which are…

Using the band representation of the 3-strand braid group, it is shown that the genus of 3-braid links can be read off their skein polynomial. Some applications are given, in particular a simple proof of Morton's conjectured inequality and…

Knots and links which are closed 3-braids are a very special class. Like 2-bridge knots and links, they are simple enough to admit a complete classification. At the same time they are rich enough to serve as a source of examples on which,…

We give examples of knots with some unusual properties of the crossing number of positive diagrams or strand number of positive braid representations. In particular we show that positive braid knots may not have positive minimal (strand…

It is known that the minimal degree of the Jones polynomial of a positive knot is equal to its genus, and the minimal coefficient is 1. We extend this result to almost positive links and partly identify the 3 following coefficients for…

We study the Morton-Franks-Williams inequality for closures of simple braids (also known as positive permutation braids). This allows to prove, in a simple way, that the set of simple braids is a orthonormal basis for the inner product of…

Many well studied knots can be realized as positive braid knots where the braid word contains a positive full twist; we say that such knots are twist positive. Some important families of knots are twist positive, including torus knots,…

Strongly quasipositive links are those links which can be seen as closures of positive braids in terms of band generators. In this paper we give a necessary condition for a link with braid index 3 to be strongly quasipositive, by proving…

Motivated by an observation of Dehornoy, we study the roots of Alexander polynomials of knots and links that are closures of positive 3-strand braids. We give experimental data on random such braids and find that the roots exhibit marked…

We use the Birman-Ko-Lee presentation of the braid group to show that all closures of strongly quasipositive braids whose normal form contains a positive power of the dual Garside element $\delta$ are fibered. We classify links which admit…

We provide the optimal linear bound for the signature of positive four-braids in terms of the three-genus of their closures. As a consequence, we improve previously known linear bounds for the signature in terms of the first Betti number…

Ozsv\'ath and Szab\'o conjectured that knot Floer homology detects fibred links. We will verify this conjecture for closed 3-braids, by classifying fibred closed 3-braids. In particular, given a nontrivial closed 3-braid, either it is…

For a positive braid link, a link represented as a closed positive braids, we determine the first few coefficients of its HOMFLY polynomial in terms of geometric invariants such as, the maximum euler characteristics, the number of split…

We give an upper bound for the dealternating number of a closed 3-braid. As applications, we determine the dealternating numbers, the alternation numbers and the Turaev genera of some closed positive 3-braids. We also show that there exist…

In this paper, we show that the volumes for a family of A-adequate closed braids can be bounded above and below in terms of the twist number, the number of braid strings, and a quantity that can be read from the combinatorics of a given…

We classify 3-braid knots whose topological 4-genus coincides with their Seifert genus, using McCoy's twisting method and the Xu normal form. In addition, we give upper bounds for the topological 4-genus of positive and strongly…

In this note, we prove a lower bound for the positive kinkiness of a closed braid which we then use to derive an estimate for the positive kinkiness of a link in terms of its Seifert system. As an application, we show that certain pretzel…

We prove that the Alexander polynomials of certain families of alternating 4-braid knots satisfy Fox's Trapezoidal Conjecture. Moreover, we give explicit formulas for the signature and for the first 4 coefficients of the Alexander…

A link in $S^3$ is called real algebraic if it is the link of an isolated singularity of a polynomial map from $\mathbb{R}^4$ to $\mathbb{R}^2$. It is known that every real algebraic link is fibered and it is conjectured that the converse…

It has been conjectured that the algebraic crossing number of a link is uniquely determined in minimal braid representation. This conjecture is true for many classes of knots and links. The Morton-Franks-Williams inequality gives a lower…