Related papers: Essential meridional surfaces for tunnel number on…
Introducing a way to modify knots using $n$-trivial rational tangles, we show that knots with given values of Vassiliev invariants of bounded degree can have arbitrary unknotting number (extending a recent result of Ohyama, Taniyama and…
We derive a linear estimate of the signature of positive knots, in terms of their genus. As an application, we show that every knot concordance class contains at most finitely many positive knots.
We show that for any given closed orientable 3-manifold M with a Heegaard surface of genus g, any positive integers b and n, there exists a knot K in M which admits a (g,b)-bridge splitting of distance greater than n with respect to the…
In Dunfield's catalog of the hyperbolic manifolds in the SnapPy census which are complements of L-space knots in $S^3$, we determine that $22$ have tunnel number $2$ while the remaining all have tunnel number $1$. Notably, these $22$…
In this paper, we show that there is no surface-knot of genus one with triple point number invariant equal to three.
A knot K is called a 1-genus 1-bridge knot in a 3-manifold M if (M,K) has a Heegaard splitting (V_1,t_1)\cup (V_2,t_2) where V_i is a solid torus and t_i is a boundary parallel arc properly embedded in V_i. If the exterior of a knot has a…
We prove that 0 is a characterizing slope for infinitely many knots, namely the genus-1 knots whose knot Floer homology is 2-dimensional in the top Alexander grading, which we classified in recent work and which include all $(-3,3,2n+1)$…
This is the second of three papers that refine and extend portions of our earlier preprint, "The depth of a knot tunnel." Together, they rework the entire preprint. The theory of tunnel number 1 knots that we introduced in "The tree of knot…
We investigate the question of when distinct branched surfaces in the complement of a 2-bridge knot support essential surfaces with identical boundary slopes. We determine all instances in which this occurs and identify an infinite family…
We show that for genus one knots the Alexander polynomial and the homology of the double cover branching over the knot provide obstructions to cosmetic crossings. As an application we prove the nugatory crossing conjecture for the…
The theory of tunnel number 1 knots detailed in our previous paper, The tree of knot tunnels, provides a non-negative integer invariant called the depth of the tunnel. We give various results related to the depth invariant. Noting that it…
For each pair of integers g at least 2 and h at least 1, we explicitly construct infinitely many fiber sum and section sum indecomposable genus g surface bundles over genus h surfaces whose total spaces are pairwise homotopy inequivalent.
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…
One can embed arbitrarily many disjoint, non-parallel, non-boundary parallel, incompressible surfaces in any three manifold with at least one boundary component of genus two or greater [4]. This paper proves the contrasting, but not…
We introduce a geometric invariant of knots in the three-sphere, called the first-order genus, that is derived from certain 2-complexes called gropes, and we show it is computable for many examples. While computing this invariant, we draw…
On a compact oriented surface of genus $g$ with $n\geq 1$ boundary components, $\delta_1, \delta_2,\ldots, \delta_n$, we consider positive factorizations of the boundary multitwist $t_{\delta_1} t_{\delta_2} \cdots t_{\delta_n}$, where…
Determining unknotting numbers is a large and widely studied problem. We consider the more general question of the unknotting number of a spatial graph. We show the unknotting number of spatial graphs is subadditive. Let $g$ be an embedding…
We study invariant Seifert surfaces for strongly invertible knots, and prove that the gap between the equivariant genus (the minimum of the genera of invariant Seifert surfaces) of a strongly invertible knot and the (usual) genus of the…
We show, for every positive integer $n$, there is an alternating knot having a boundary slope with denominator $n$. We make use of Kabaya's method for boundary slopes and the layered solid torus construction introduced by Jaco and…
The n-th crossing number of a graph G, denoted cr_n(G), is the minimum number of crossings in a drawing of G on an orientable surface of genus n. We prove that for every a>b>0, there exists a graph G for which cr_0(G) = a, cr_1(G) = b, and…