Related papers: The crossing number and maximal bridge length of a…
Minimum braids are a complete invariant of knots and links. This paper defines minimum braids, describes how they can be generated, presents tables for knots up to ten crossings and oriented links up to nine crossings, and uses minimum…
We present three "hard" diagrams of the unknot. They require (at least) three extra crossings before they can be simplified to the trivial unknot diagram via Reidemeister moves in $\mathbb{S}^2$. Both examples are constructed by applying…
Given a connected cobordism between two knots in the 3-sphere, our main result is an inequality involving torsion orders of the knot Floer homology of the knots, and the number of local maxima and the genus of the cobordism. This has…
A diagonal surface in a link exterior M is a properly embedded, incompressible, boundary incompressible surface which furthermore has the same number of boundary components and same slope on each component of the boundary of M. We derive a…
The maximum length of the shortest path from a leaf to the root of a skein tree for knots and links gives a measure of the complexity of computing link polynomials by the skein relation (the Jones polynomial, the Alexander-Conway…
We show that a two-bridge ribbon knot $K(m^2 , m k \pm 1)$ with $m > k >0$ and $(m,k)=1$ admits a symmetric union presentation with partial knot which is a two-bridge knot $K(m,k)$. Similar descriptions for all the other two-bridge ribbon…
A knotted ribbon is one of physical aspect of a knot. A folded ribbon knot is a depiction of a knot obtained by folding a long and thin rectangular strip to become flat. The ribbonlength of a knot type can be defined as the minimum length…
We show that if $K$ is a knot in $S^3$ and $\Sigma$ is a bridge sphere for $K$ with high distance and $2n$ punctures, the number of perturbations of $K$ required to interchange the two balls bounded by $\Sigma$ via an isotopy is $n$. We…
We consider diagrams of links in $S^2$ obtained by projection from $S^3$ with the Hopf map and the minimal crossing number for such diagrams. Knots admitting diagrams with at most one crossing are classified. Some properties of these knots…
In this article we study the braid indices of 2-bridge knots with a fixed crossing number $c$. We show that the average braid index of the set of $2$-bridge knots of crossing number $c$ is asymptotically linear, approaching…
We describe a correspondence between augmentations and certain representations of the knot group. The correspondence makes the 2-variable augmentation polynomial into a generalization of the classical $A$-polynomial. It also associates to…
The paper introduces Slope Conjecture which relates the degree of the Jones polynomial of a knot and its parallels with the slopes of incompressible surfaces in the knot complement. More precisely, we introduce two knot invariants, the…
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…
This work presents formulas for the Kauffman bracket and Jones polynomials of 3-bridge knots using the structure of Chebyshev knots and their billiard table diagrams. In particular, these give far fewer terms than in the Skein relation…
J. Hempel's definition of the distance of a Heegaard surface generalizes to a complexity for a knot which is in bridge position with respect to a Heegaard surface. Our main result is that the distance of a knot in bridge position is bounded…
We prove that if an alternating knot has unknotting number one, then there exists an unknotting crossing in any alternating diagram. This is done by showing that the obstruction to unknotting number one developed by Greene in his work on…
A ribbon is a two-dimensional object with one-dimensional properties which is related with geometry, robotics and molecular biology. A folded ribbon structure provides a complex structure through a series of folds. We focus on a folded…
We consider a natural model of random knotting- choose a knot diagram at random from the finite set of diagrams with n crossings. We tabulate diagrams with 10 and fewer crossings and classify the diagrams by knot type, allowing us to…
We give characterizations of the skein polynomial for links (as well as Jones and Alexander-Conway polynomials derivable from it), avoiding the usual "smoothing of a crossing" move. As by-products we have characterizations of these…
In this paper, we give the trivializing number of all minimal diagrams of positive 2-bridge knots, and study the relation between the trivializing number and the unknotting number for a part of these knots.