Related papers: Thin position and essential planar surfaces
We study near-alternating links whose diagrams satisfy conditions generalized from the notion of semi-adequate links. We extend many of the results known for adequate knots relating their colored Jones polynomials to the topology of…
A sequence of points $z_k$ in the unit disk is said to be thin for a given decrease function $\rho$, if there is a nontrivial bounded holomorphic function such that the infinite series $\sum_k \rho(1-|z_k|)|f(z_k)|$ converges. All sequences…
We establish a characterization of alternating links in terms of definite spanning surfaces. We apply it to obtain a new proof of Tait's conjecture that reduced alternating diagrams of the same link have the same crossing number and writhe.…
We show that all nontrivial embeddings of planar graphs on the torus contain a nontrivial knot or a nonsplit link. This is equivalent to showing that no minimally knotted planar spatial graphs on the torus exist that contain neither a…
With its boundary tracing out a link or knot in 3D, the Seifert surface is a 2D surface of core importance to topological classification. We propose the first-ever experimentally realistic setup where Seifert surfaces emerge as the boundary…
Since the 1980s, it has been known that essential surfaces in alternating link complements can be isotoped to be transverse to the link diagram almost everywhere, with the exception of some well-understood intersections, and described…
Suppose a link K in a 3-manifold M is in bridge position with respect to two different bridge surfaces P and Q, both of which are c-weakly incompressible in the complement of K. Then either P and Q can be properly isotoped to intersect in a…
We investigate properties of spatial graphs on the standard torus. It is known that nontrivial embeddings of planar graphs in the torus contain a nontrivial knot or a nonsplit link due to [1],[2]. Building on this and using the chirality of…
Neuwirth asked if any non-trivial knot in the 3-sphere can be embedded in a closed surface so that the complement of the surface is a connected essential surface for the knot complement. In this paper, we examine some variations on this…
We prove a Kauffman-Murasugi-Thistlethwaite theorem for alternating links in thickened surfaces. It states that any reduced alternating diagram of a link in a thickened surface has minimal crossing number, and any two reduced alternating…
It is well known that there exist knots with Seifert surfaces of arbitrarily high genus. In this paper, we show the existence of infinitely many knot exteriors where each of which has longitudinal essential surfaces of any positive genus…
We provide a new proof of the following results of H. Schubert: If K is a satellite knot with companion J and pattern L that lies in a solid torus T in which it has index k, then the bridge numbers satisfy the following: 1) The bridge…
We use the 2-loop term of the Kontsevich integral to show that there are (many) knots with trivial Alexander polynomial which don't have a Seifert surface whose genus equals the rank of the Seifert form. This is one of the first…
We prove a Ros-Rosenberg theorem in the setting of Special Weingarten surfaces. We show that a compact, connected, embedded, Special Weingarten surface in $\mathhb{R}^3$ with planar convex boundary is a topological disk under mild suitable…
It is shown that there exist alternating non-Montesinos knots whose essential spanning surfaces with maximal and minimal boundary slopes are not realised by the checkerboard surfaces coming from a reduced alternating planar diagram.
Suppose that every non-minimal bridge position of a knot $K$ is perturbed. We show that if $L$ is a $(2, 2q)$-cable link of $K$, then every non-minimal bridge position of $L$ is also perturbed.
Weak topological insulators have an even number of Dirac cones in their surface spectrum and are thought to be unstable to disorder, which leads to an insulating surface. Here we argue that the presence of disorder alone will not localize…
We unify the notions of thin position for knots and for 3-manifolds and survey recent work concerning these notions.
It is proved that every disconnected surface-link with meridian-based free fundamental group is a trivial (i.e., an unknotted-unlinked) surface-link. This result is a surface-link version of the author's recent announcement result on smooth…
A cobordism between links in thickened surfaces consists of a surface $ S $ and a $3$-manifold $M $, with $ S $ properly embedded in $ M \times I $. We show that there exist links in thickened surfaces such that if $(S,M) $ is a cobordism…