Narrow Results

We study the variation of the Tait number of a closed space curve according to its different projections. The results are used to compute the writhe of a knot, leading to a closed formula in case of polygonal curves.

It is known by few that a trivial knot can be transformed into a lattice knot whose three shadows are all trees (here, three shadows mean the projections of the lattice knot to the directions of ordinary orthogonal axes). Since a knot itself is a loop in the space, this fact may be rather astonishing. It will be interesting to ask whether a non-trivial knot has such a transformation or not. The purpose of this paper is to show that any two-bridge torus knot or link has a transformation into a lattice knot whose three shadows are all trees. The algorithm to construct such a position will be demonstrated.

Let Len(K) be the minimum length of a knot on the cubic lattice (namely the minimum length necessary to construct the knot in the cubic lattice). This paper provides upper bounds for Len(K) of a nontrivial knot K in terms of its crossing number c(K) as follows:

The stick number and the edge length of a knot type in the simple hexagonal lattice (sh-lattice) are the minimal numbers of sticks and edges required, respectively, to construct a knot of the given type in sh-lattice. By introducing a linear transformation between lattices, we prove that for any given knot both values in the sh-lattice are strictly less than the values in the cubic lattice. Finally, we show that the only non-trivial $11$-stick knots in the sh-lattice are the trefoil knot ($3_1$) and the figure-eight knot ($4_1$).