Narrow Results

Lomonaco and Kauffman [Quantum knots and mosaics, Quantum Inf. Process.7(2–3) (2008) 85–115] introduced the notion of knot mosaics in their work on quantum knots. It is conjectured that knot mosaic type is a complete invariant of tame knots. In this paper, we answer a question of C. Adams by constructing an infinite family of knots whose mosaic number can be realized only when the crossing number is not. That is, there is an infinite family of non-minimal knots whose mosaic numbers are known.

Lomonaco and Kauffman developed knot mosaics to give a definition of a quantum knot system. This definition is intended to represent an actual physical quantum system. A knot n-mosaic is an n × n matrix of 11 kinds of specific mosaic tiles representing a knot or a link. The mosaic number m(K) of a knot K is the smallest integer n for which K is representable as a knot n-mosaic. In this paper, we establish an upper bound on the mosaic number of a knot or a link K in terms of the crossing number c(K). Let K be a nontrivial knot or a non-split link except the Hopf link. Then m(K) ≤ c(K) + 1. Moreover if K is prime and non-alternating except link, then m(K) ≤ c(K) - 1.

In this paper, we introduce the concept of a space-efficient knot mosaic. That is, we seek to determine how to create knot mosaics using the least number of non-blank tiles necessary to depict the knot. This least number is called the tile number of the knot. We determine strict bounds for the tile number of a knot in terms of the mosaic number of the knot. We also determine the tile number of several knots and provide space-efficient knot mosaics for each of them.

In this paper, mosaic tiles have been used to build knots and define invariants since they were introduced by Lomonaco and Kauffman to describe quantum knots. In this paper, we propose a modified set of tiles to describe the front projections of Legendrian knots. We explore the effect of stabilization on the mosaic number of a Legendrian knot by defining and classifying “two-cell” stabilizations. Inspired by a construction of Ludwig et al. in 2013, we provide an infinite family of Legendrian unknots whose mosaic numbers are realized only in non-reduced projections. Finally, we provide a census of known mosaic numbers for Legendrian unknots and trefoils.