Curvature index for spatial theta-curves. (Q1608958)

The curvature index for a polygonal map from a graph to the Euclidean space was introduced by \textit{K. Taniyama } [Differ. Geom. Appl. 8, 135--155 (1998; Zbl 0924.53004)]. In this paper, the curvature index \(\kappa^{*}(\Gamma)\) for a spatial theta-curve \(\Gamma\) is discussed as an analogue of the one for knots in the sense of \textit{J. Milnor} [Ann. Math. (2) 52, 248--257 (1950; Zbl 0037.38904)]. Milnor proved that the curvature index of a knot is equal to twice the bridge index of it. The authors give a relationship between \(\kappa^{*}(\Gamma)\) for a spatial theta-curve \(\Gamma\) and its bridge index \(b(\Gamma)\) introduced by \textit{H. Goda} [Topology Appl. 79, 177--196 (1997; Zbl 0888.57003)]. They show that (i) if \(\kappa^{*}(\Gamma)=2m+1\) for some positive integer \(m\geq 2\), then \(b(\Gamma)=m\), and (ii) if \(\kappa^{*}(\Gamma)=2m\) for some positive integer \(m\geq 3\), then either \(b(\Gamma)=m-1\) or \(b(\Gamma)=m\). Moreover, for any positive integer \(m\geq 3\), there exist two theta-curves \(\widehat{\Gamma}\) and \(\widehat{\Gamma}'\) such that \(\kappa^{*}(\widehat{\Gamma})=\kappa^{*}(\widehat{\Gamma}')=2m\), \(b(\widehat{\Gamma})=m-1\) and \(b(\widehat{\Gamma}')=m\). Besides they mention a relationship between \(\kappa^{*}(\Gamma)\) and the vertex connected sum \(\Gamma \# \Gamma'\) for spatial theta-curves \(\Gamma\) and \(\Gamma'\) in the sense of \textit{K. Wolcott} [Geometry and topology, Proc. Conf., Athens/Ga. 1985, Lect. Notes Pure Appl. Math. 105, 325--346 (1987; Zbl 0613.57003)]. They denote \(\kappa^{*}(\Gamma)+\kappa^{*}(\Gamma')-\kappa^{*}(\Gamma \# \Gamma')\) by \(\sigma(\Gamma,\Gamma')\) and show that (i) \(\sigma(\Gamma,\Gamma')\geq 2\) for any two theta-curves \(\Gamma\) and \(\Gamma'\), and (ii) for any positive integer \(n\geq 2\), there exist two theta-curves \(\Gamma_{n}\) and \(\Gamma_{n}'\) such that \(\sigma(\Gamma_{n},\Gamma_{n}')=n\).