We estimate from below the number of lines meeting each of given 4 disjoint smooth closed curves in a given cyclic order in the real projective 3-space and in a given linear order in the Euclidean 3-space. Similarly, we estimate the number of circles meeting in a given cyclic order given 6 disjoint smooth closed curves in Euclidean 3-space. The estimations are formulated in terms of linking numbers of the curves and obtained by orienting of the corresponding configuration spaces and evaluating of their signatures. This involves a study of a surface swept by lines meeting 3 given disjoint smooth closed curves and a surface swept in the 3-space by circles meeting 5 given disjoint smooth closed curves. Higher dimensional generalizations of these results are outlined.
An oriented link projection is the image of a generic immersion of oriented circles into the 2-sphere. The circle arrangement of a link projection is a disjoint union of unoriented circles on the 2-sphere obtained by orientation-incoherent smoothing at each crossing point. We show that two oriented link projections have the same circle arrangement if and only if they are transformed into each other by certain local moves. We also show that every odd (resp. even) component link has a link projection whose circle arrangement consists of exactly one (resp. two) circles.
We show that all two-bridge knot and link complements are virtually fibered. We also show that spherical Montesinos knot and link complements are virtually fibered. This is accomplished by showing that such knot complements are finitely covered by great circle link complements.
We investigate great circle links in the three-sphere, the class of links where each component is a great circle. Using the geometry of their complements, we classify such links up to five components. For any two-bridge knot complement, there is a finite cover that is the complement of a link of great circles in $S^3$. We show that for many two-bridge knots, this cover contains a closed incompressible surface. Infinitely many fillings of the two-bridge knot lift to fillings of great circle link where the incompressibility of this surface is preserved. Using this, we show that infinitely many f…
Rectangular diagrams of links are link diagrams in the plane ${\mathbb R}^2$ such that they are composed of vertical line segments and horizontal line segments and vertical segments go over horizontal segments at all crossings. P. R. Cromwell and I. A. Dynnikov showed that rectangular diagrams of links are useful for deciding whether a given link is split or not, and whether a given knot is trivial or not. We show in this paper that an oriented link diagram $D$ with $c(D)$ crossings and $s(D)$ Seifert circles can be deformed by an ambient isotopy of ${\mathbb R}^2$ into a rectangular diagram w…
It is well known that the minimum crossing number of an alternating link equals the number of crossings in any reduced alternating link diagram of the link. This remarkable result is an application of the Jones polynomial. In the case of the braid index of an alternating link, Murasugi had conjectured that the number of Seifert circles in a reduced alternating diagram of the link equals the braid index of the link. This conjecture turned out to be false. In this paper we prove the next best thing that one could hope for: we characterize exactly those alternating links for which their braid ind…
Murasugi sums can be defined as readily for Morse maps to the circle of (arbitrary) link complements in the 3-sphere as for fibrations over the circle of (fibered) link complements in the 3-sphere. As one application, I show that if a knot K has free genus m, then there is a Morse map from its complement to the circle (representing the relative homology class of a Seifert surface for K) with no more than 4m critical points.
For any two disjoint oriented circles embedded into the 3-dimensional real projective space, we construct a 3-dimensional configuration space and its map to the projective space such that the linking number of the circles is the half of the degree of the map. Similar interpretations are given for the linking number of cycles in a projective space of arbitrary odd dimension and the self-linking number of a zero homologous knot in the 3-dimensional projective space.
Homology of the circle with non-trivial local coefficients is trivial. From this well-known fact we deduce geometric corollaries concerning links of codimension two. In particular, the Murasugi-Tristram signatures are extended to invariants of links formed of arbitrary oriented closed codimension two submanifolds of an odd-dimensional sphere. The novelty is that the submanifolds are not assumed to be disjoint, but are transversal to each other, and the signatures are parametrized by points of the whole torus. Murasugi-Tristram inequalities and their generalizations are also extended to this se…
Tied links in $S^3$ were introduced by Aicardi and Juyumaya as standard links in $S^3$ equipped with some non-embedded arcs, called {\it ties}, joining some components of the link. Tied links in the Solid Torus were then naturally generalized by Flores. In this paper we study this new class of links in other topological settings. More precisely, we study tied links in the lens spaces $L(p,1)$, in handlebodies of genus $g$, and in the complement of the $g$-component unlink. We introduce the tied braid groups $TB_{g, n}$ by combining the algebraic mixed braid groups defined by Lambropoulou and t…
Let N be a closed oriented k-dimensional submanifold of the (k+2)-dimensional sphere; denote its complement by C(N). Denote by x the 1-dimensional cohomology class in C(N), dual to N. The Morse-Novikov number of C(N) is by definition the minimal possible number of critical points of a regular Morse map f from C(N) to a circle, such that f belongs to x. In the first part of this paper we study the case when N is the twist frame spun knot associated to an m-knot K. We obtain a formula which relates the Morse-Novikov numbers of N and K and generalizes the classical results of D. Roseman and E.C. …
The Morse-Novikov number MN(L) of a smooth link L in the three-dimensional sphere is by definition the minimal possible number of critical points of a regular circle-valued Morse function on the link complement (the term regular means that the Morse function must have nice behaviour in a tubular neighbourhood of L). Novikov homology provides lower bounds for MN(L). In the present paper we introduce the notion of twisted Novikov homology, which allows to obtain better lower bounds for MN(L) than the usual Novikov homology. Our twisted Novikov homology is a module over the Novikov ring Z((t)) bu…
Östlund (2001) showed that all planar isotopy invariants of generic plane curves that are unchanged under cusp moves and triple point moves, and of finite degree (in self-tangency moves) are trivial. Here the term "of finite degree" means Arnold-Vassiliev type. It implies the conjecture, which was often called Östlund conjecture: "Types I and III Reidemeister moves are sufficient to describe a homotopy from any generic immersion from the circle into the plain to the standard embedding of the circle". Although counterexamples are known nowadays, there had been no (easy computable) function that…
It is well known that the braid index of a link equals the minimum number of Seifert circles among all link diagrams representing it. For a link with a reduced alternating diagram $D$, $s(D)$, the number of Seifert circles in $D$, equals the braid index $\textbf{b}(D)$ of $D$ if $D$ contains no {\em lone crossings} (a crossing in $D$ is called a {\em lone crossing} if it is the only crossing between two Seifert circles in $D$). If $D$ contains lone crossings, then $\textbf{b}(D)$ is strictly less than $s(D)$. However in general it is not known how $s(D)$ is related to $\textbf{b}(D)$. In this …
It was proven by González-Meneses, Manchón and Silvero that the extreme Khovanov homology of a link diagram is isomorphic to the reduced (co)homology of the independence simplicial complex obtained from a bipartite circle graph constructed from the diagram. In this paper we conjecture that this simplicial complex is always homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres. In particular, its homotopy type, if not contractible, would be a link invariant and it would imply that the extreme Khovanov homology of any link diagram does not contain torsion. We prove the conjecture in many special cases and f…
A book embedding of a complete graph is a spatial embedding whose planar projection has the vertices located along a circle, consecutive vertices are connected by arcs of the circle, and the projections of the remaining "interior" edges in the graph are straight line segments between the points on the circle representing the appropriate vertices. A random embedding of a complete graph can be generated by randomly assigning relative heights to these interior edges. We study a family of two-component links that arise as the realizations of pairs of disjoint cycles in these random embeddings of g…
For a banded link $L$ in a surface times a circle, the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants are topological invariants depending on a sequence of complex $2p$-th roots of unity $(A_p)_{p\in 2\mathbb{N}}$. We show that there exists a polynomial $P_L$ such that these normalized invariants converge to $P_L(u)$ when $A_p$ converges to $u$, for all but a finite number of $u$'s in $S^1$. This is related to the AMU conjecture which predicts that non-simple curves have infinite order under quantum representations (for big enough levels). Estimating the degree of $P_L$, we exhibit particular types of c…
A link in the 3-sphere is called (smoothly) slice if its components bound disjoint smoothly embedded disks in the 4-ball. More generally, given a 4-manifold M with a distinguished circle in its boundary, a link in the 3-sphere is called M-slice if its components bound in the 4-ball disjoint embedded copies of M. A 4-manifold M is constructed such that the Borromean rings are not M-slice but the Hopf link is. This contrasts the classical link-slice setting where the Hopf link may be thought of "the most non-slice" link. Further examples and an obstruction for a family of decompositions of the 4…
The main result in this paper is that the space of all smooth links in Euclidean 3-space isotopic to the trivial link of n components has the same homotopy type as its finite-dimensional subspace consisting of configurations of n unlinked Euclidean circles (the "rings" in the title). There is also an analogous result for spaces of arcs in upper half-space, with circles replaced by semicircles (the "wickets" in the title). A key part of the proofs is a procedure for greatly reducing the complexity of tangled configurations of rings and wickets. This leads to simple methods for computing present…
In this paper we compute a presentation for the group of ring motions of the split union of a Hopf link with Euclidean components and a Euclidean circle. A key part of this work is the study of a short exact sequence of groups of ring motions of general ring links in $\mathbb{R}^3$. This sequence allowed us to build the main result from the previously known case of the ring group with one component, which a particular case of the ring groups studied by Brendle and Hatcher. This work is a first step towards the computation of a presentation for groups of motions of H-trivial links with an arbit…
Knotted vortices such as those produced in water by Kleckner and Irvine tend to transform by reconnection to collections of unknotted and unlinked circles. The reconnection number $R(K)$ of an oriented knot of link $K$ is the least number of reconnections (oriented re-smoothings) needed to unknot/unlink $K$. Putting this problem into the context of knot cobordism, we show, using Rasmussen's Invariant that the reconnection number of a positive knot is equal to twice the genus of its Seifert spanning surface. In particular an $(a,b)$ torus knot has $R = (a-1)(b-1).$ For an arbitrary unsplittable…
Starting from a divide, i.e. a generic immersion of finitely many copies of the interval [0,1] in the disk, we construct a classical link in the 3-sphere. We prove that the link's complement fibers over the circle, if the divide is connected. Moreover, we compute the monodromy diffeomorphism from the combinatorics of the divide. We added to this version of the paper the theorem about the gordian number of the link of a divide. The gordian number of the link of a divide equals the number of double points of the divide.
The Morse-Novikov number MN(L) of an oriented link L in the 3-sphere is the minimum number of critical points of a Morse map from the complement of L in the 3-sphere to the circle representing the class of a Seifert surface for L (e.g., the Morse-Novikov number of L is zero if and only if L is fibered). We develop various constructions of Morse maps (Milnor maps, Stallings twists, splicing along a link which is a closed braid with respect to a Morse map, Murasugi sums, cutting a Morse map along an arc on a page) and use them to bound Morse-Novikov numbers from above in terms of other knot and …
A crown diagram of a smooth, closed oriented 4-manifold can be thought of as the projection of a link in the product of a closed surface and the circle, with chords in the circle direction connecting the strands of each crossing. This paper uses a straightforward assignment of integers to these chords to show that the smooth structures on the topological 4-manifold underlying a pair of Fintushel-Stern knot surgery 4-manifolds which are known to have the same Seiberg-Witten invariant are not isotopic. A natural question is to determine if the argument may be strengthened to show these manifolds…
Lisa Traynor has described an example of a two-component Legendrian `circular helix link' in the 1-jet space of the circle (with its canonical contact structure) that is topologically but not Legendrian isotopic to that same link with the order of the two components reversed. We give a complete classification of the Legendrian realisations of this topological link type, as well as all other `cable links' in that 1-jet space.
In this paper we show how to realize all knot (and link) types as C^{2} smooth curves of constant curvature. Our proof is constructive: we build the knots with copies of a fixed finite number of "building blocks" that are particular segments of helices and circles. We use these building blocks to construct all closed braids.
For a smooth complex curve C, we consider the link L(r) intersection of C with the boundary of B(r), where B(r) denotes an Euclidean ball of radius r>0. We prove that the diagram D(r) obtained from L(r) by a complex stereographic projection satisfies that the Euler characteristic of the part of C in B(r) equals the rotation number of D(r) minus the writhe of D(r). As a consequence we show that if D(r) has no negative Seifert circles and L(r) is strongly quasipositive and fibred, then the Yamada-Vogel algorithm applied to D(r) yields a quasipositive braid.
