Diagrammatic Unknotting of Knots and Links in the Projective Space (Q4474510)

It is a well-known fact that any diagram of a link in \(3\)-space can be transformed, by changing some of its crossings, into a diagram of the unlink. The aim of this paper is to prove an analogous result for links in projective \(3\)-space \(\mathbb{R}P^3\). A diagram is now an immersion, with transverse double points, of several circles in the projective plane \(\mathbb{R}P^2\) represented as a disk with antipodal points of its boundary identified. Reidemeister moves are defined for such diagrams. Since the regular homotopy class of a link in \(\mathbb{R}P^3\) is determined by the homotopy classes of its components, a standard unlink \(L_{p,q}\) is defined with \(p\) inessential components and \(q\) essential components. The main result then is that every (unordered and unoriented) link diagram in \(\mathbb{R}P^3\) can be transformed, by changing some of its crossings, to a link diagram of the appropriate \(L_{p,q}\). For oriented links the analogous result is shown to be false.