Narrow Results

A finite set of nontrivial θ_n-curves is shown to be minimal among those which produce all projections of nontrivial θ_n-curves.

We consider a surface embedded in the 3-space. Such a surface is called unknotted if the closures of the complementary regions in the 3-sphere are both handlebodies. In this paper, we give a sufficient condition for a torus in the 3-space to be unknotted by using a projection onto a plane. We also prove that this condition is not sufficient for surfaces of higher genera.

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.

The singularity set of a generic standard projection to the three space of a closed surface linked in four space, consists of at most three types: double points, triple points or branch points. We say that this generic projection image is p-diagram if it does not contain any triple point. Two p-diagrams of equivalent surface links are called p-equivalent if there exist a finite sequence of local moves, such that each of them is one of the four moves taken from the seven on the well known Roseman list, that connects only p-diagrams. It is natural to ask that whether any of two p-diagrams of equivalent surface links always p-equivalent? We introduce an invariant of p-equivalent diagrams and an example of linked surfaces that answers our question negatively.

We construct various functorial maps (projections) from virtual knots to classical knots. These maps are defined on diagrams of virtual knots; in terms of Gauss diagram each of them can be represented as a deletion of some chords. The construction relies upon the notion of parity. As corollaries, we prove that the minimal classical crossing number for classical knots. Such projections can be useful for lifting invariants from classical knots to virtual knots. Different maps satisfy different properties.