A circular embedding of a graph in Euclidean 3-space (Q1041667)

\textit{S. Negami} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 324, No.~2, 527--541 (1991; Zbl 0721.57004)] has shown that, for any link \(L\), there is a natural number \(m\) such that, if \(n>m\), any linear embedding of the complete graph \(K_n\) in \(\mathbb R ^3\) contains a link equivalent to \(L\). In this paper the authors exhibit linear embeddings of \(K_{2n - 1}\) and \(K_{2n}\) which contain the torus knot \(T(2n - 5,2)\) for \(n\geq 4\). The authors also consider circular embeddings: a circular embedding of a knot is an embedding composed of circular arcs. The circular number of a knot is the minimal number of circular arcs in \(\mathbb R^3\) among all the circular embeddings of the knot. This is always less than or equal to the stick number of the knot. The authors show that the trefoil knot is the only knot with circular number three. It is also proved that the figure-eight knot has circular number four.