Related papers: New lower bound for the distortion of a knotted cu…
The distortion of a curve measures the maximum arc/chord length ratio. Gromov showed any closed curve has distortion at least pi/2 and asked about the distortion of knots. Here, we prove that any nontrivial tame knot has distortion at least…
The distortion of a curve is the supremum, taken over distinct pairs of points of the curve, of the ratio of arclength to spatial distance between the points. Gromov asked in 1981 whether a curve in every knot type can be constructed with…
We extend techniques due to Pardon to show that there is a lower bound on the distortion of a knot in $\mathbb{R}^3$ proportional to the minimum of the bridge distance and the bridge number of the knot. We also exhibit an infinite family of…
Our main result is a nontrivial lower bound for the distortion of some specific knots. In particular, we show that the distortion of the torus knot $T_{p,q}$ satisfies $\delta(T_{p,q})>\frac 1{160}\min(p,q)$. This answers a 1983 question of…
What length of rope (of given diameter) is required to tie a particular knot? To answer this question, we define some new notions of thickness for a space curve, one based on Gromov's distortion, and another generalizing the thickness of…
The vertex distortion of a lattice knot is the supremum of the ratio of the distance between a pair of vertices along the knot and their distance in the l1-norm. We show analogous results to those of Gromov, Pardon and…
The first two authors introduced vertex distortion and showed that the vertex distortion of the unknot is trivial. It was conjectured that the vertex distortion of a knot is trivial if and only if the knot is trivial. We will use…
We show that the distortion of the (2,q)-torus knot is not bounded linearly from below.
We provide sharp lower bounds for two versions of the Kirby-Thompson invariants for knotted surfaces, one of which was originally defined by Blair, Campisi, Taylor, and Tomova. The second version introduced in this paper measures distances…
The convex hull of a set K in space consists of points which are, in a certain sense, "surrounded" by K. When K is a closed curve, we define its higher hulls, consisting of points which are "multiply surrounded" by the curve. Our main…
It is known that the surface of a cone over the unit disc with large height has smaller distortion than the standard embedding of the 2-sphere in $\mathbb R^3$. In this note we show that distortion minimisers exist among convex embedded…
The well known formulas express the curvature and the torsion of a curve in $R^3$ in terms of euclidean invariants of its derivatives. We obtain expressions of this kind for all curvatures of curves in $R^n$. It follows that a curve in…
We showed that the order of torsion homology classes in the grid homology of a knot is a lower bound for the unknotting number.
This paper examines the relationship between the knotting of an embedded surface in $\R^3$ and the knotting of its fold curves, formed by the singular set of projection to a plane. The first result shows that every surface, no matter how…
A non-singular connected algebraic curve $A$ in a simply connected algebraic surface $X$ can be knotted so that its homology class and the fundamental group of its complement in $X$ is preserved, provided $A$ is sufficiently complex (not…
A new isoperimetric estimate is proved for embedded closed curves evolving by curve shortening flow, normalized to have total length $2\pi$. The estimate bounds the length of any chord from below in terms of the arc length between its…
We show that a smooth unknotted curve in R^3 satisfies an isoperimetric inequality that bounds the area of an embedded disk spanning the curve in terms of two parameters: the length L of the curve and the thickness r (maximal radius of an…
We give a combinatorial upper bound for the gonality of a curve that is defined by a bivariate Laurent polynomial with given Newton polygon. We conjecture that this bound is generically attained, and provide proofs in a considerable number…
In 1983, Gromov introduced the notion of distortion of a knot, and asked if there are knots with arbitrarily large distortion. In 2011, Pardon proved that the distortion of $T_{p,q}$ is at least $\min\{p,q\}$ up to a constant factor. We…
We present new computations of approximately length-minimizing polygons with fixed thickness. These curves model the centerlines of "tight" knotted tubes with minimal length and fixed circular cross-section. Our curves approximately…