Hamiltonian knot projections and lengths of thick knots. (Q1421985)

It is known that knot theory plays an important role in studying the behaviour of various enzymes, in studying DNA and long chain polymers. In these cases knots must be considered as physical knots, that is they are tied with ropes which have thickness and volumes. If \(K\) is a knot or a link, then \(L(K)\) denotes the rope length of \(K\) and \(C_r(K)\) is the crossing number of \(K\). In this paper the authors are interested in finding lower and upper bounds of \(L(K)\) in terms of \(C_r(K)\). It is known that there exist positive constants \(c_1\) and \(c_2\) such that \[ c_1\cdot ((C_r(K))^{3/4}\leq L(K) \leq c_2\cdot ((C_r(K))^{2}. \] To improve this result they study regular projections of knots (links) as 4-regular planar graphs (RP-graphs) and show that any prime knot (link) admits a Hamiltonian RP--graph with at most \(4\cdot C_r(K)\) vertices. This result is then used to develop an algorithm to embed \(K\) into the cubic lattice (the infinite graph in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) whose vertices are points with integer coordinates and whose edges are unit length line segments connecting these points) such that the length of the embedded knot is of order at most \(O((C_r(K))^{3/2})\). Hence the main result of the paper, that is the rope length of any smooth knot (link) \(K\) is bounded by \(c\cdot ((C_r(K))^{3/2}\) for some constant \(c>0\). Nevertheless, for a family of knots (links) with special Hamiltonian projections the bound on the rope length can be of order \(O(C_r(K))\).