The granny and the square tangle and the unknotting number (Q5957278)

The author shows that there are families of knots of arbitrarily high unknotting number that grow exponentially in \(c\) where \(c\) is the crossing number of a knot in the family. Such families can be chosen among slice, prime alternating or arborescent knots. This can be obtained from the result that if a knot has a diagram with \(n\) granny and square tangles, then its unknotting number is at least \(n\) and its bridge index and braid index both exceed \(n\). The author shows how to distinguish enough of these knots using Kauffman's bracket version of the Jones polynomial to obtain the exponential growth rate in \(c\).