Systems of 3-braid equations (Q485089)

The tangle model introduced by \textit{C. Ernst} and \textit{D. W. Sumners} [Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 108, No. 3, 489--515 (1990; Zbl 0727.57005)] is a useful topological tool in the study of the mechanism of action of certain enzymes on DNA molecules. Roughly speaking, the tangle model consists of a system of equations in which the unknowns on the left-hand side of each equation are tangles, whereas the data on the right-hand sides are known knots and links (often 2-bridge knots or 4-plats). Solving the tangle model means to determine the topological type of the unknown tangles. In this paper, the authors consider a tangle model where the unknown tangles are 3-braids. The authors define a closure operation denoted by \(A\) that converts a 3-braid into a 4-plat by adding a fourth string to the braid that does not interact with the other three strings. The authors now consider equations of the form \(A(S+n T)=b(\alpha_n, \beta_n)\), where \(S,T\) are 3-braids, and \(b(\alpha_n, \beta_n)\) are 4-plats. \(n=\{1,2\}, \{1,2,3\}\) or \(\{1,2,3,4\}\) results in systems of 2, 3 or 4 equations. The authors show that, while a system of two equations always admits a solution for any selection of 2-bridge knots, adding a third equation reduces the number of possible knots to only 6, 9 or 18, the exact value depending on the relationships satisfied by the knots in the first two equations. If a fourth equation is adjoined, however, exactly one 2-bridge knot may appear in its the right-hand side for the system to admit a solution. Furthermore, a new simple method that exploits an unexpected cyclic behavior of the solutions is presented and used to construct the proofs. The method relies on the continued fractions associated with 2-bridge knots and their behavior under the concatenation of 3-braids. The work here extends earlier work by some of the authors [\textit{H. Cabrera-Ibarra} and \textit{D. A. Lizárraga-Navarro}, J. Knot Theory Ramifications 19, No. 8, 1051--1074 (2010; Zbl 1205.57009)].