The elastic trefoil is the doubly covered circle (Q529847)

Closed \textit{elasticae} in \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\) are critical points of the integral \[ E(\gamma) = \int_{\gamma} \varkappa^{2} \, ds, \] defined on closed curves \(\gamma \in \mathbb{R}^{3}\). These were classified by \textit{J. Langer} and \textit{D. A. Singer} [J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 30, 512--520 (1984; Zbl 0595.53001)], and the authors of this paper begin with a beautiful quote from a subsequent paper of \textit{J. Langer} and \textit{D. A. Singer} [Topology 24, 75--88 (1985; Zbl 0561.53004)] on closed, \textit{stable} elastica, that ``\dots a knotted springy wire cannot rest in stable equilibrium without points of self-contact -- an experimentally observable fact. This fact leads us to a rather curious `topologically constrained' variational problem; what actually happens if one forms a knot in a piece of springy wire? Experiments yield some beautiful curves with impressive symmetry\dots''. With this intuition, the authors use this paper to solve a minimization problem and determine the shape of minimizers for an infinite family of knot classes. Specifically, they examine the limit configurations (what they call \textit{elastic knots}) of energy minimizers of the total energy \(E_{\vartheta} = E + \vartheta \mathcal{R}\), as \(\vartheta \to 0\) and where \(\mathcal{R}\) is a ropelength control to ensure that the given knot stays within its isotopy class. For all non-trivial knot classes which achieve the natural infimum on \(E\) of \((4\pi)^{2}\), the elastic knot is the doubly covered circle. In addition, the authors prove a new characterization of the two-bridge torus knots in terms of \(E\). The penultimate section of the paper (before the appendices) contains a number of open, related questions with interesting accompanying mechanical experiments.