Two strand twisting (Q6574902)

A knot in \(S^3\) is called a \textit{fibred knot} if its complement is the total space of a fiber bundle over \(S^1\). In this paper, the authors investigate the local moves called two stand twisting, denoted \(t_{m}\) and \(\bar{t}_{m}\), to investigate the possibility of unknotting a knot; they only consider the case when \(m\) is an even number, so that the knot remains a knot (i.e. a one-component link) when applying the operation. \N\NIt is well known that every knot can be untied by a finite sequence of \textit{crossing changes} which are \(t_2\) and \(\bar{t}_2\). As the main result of this paper, the authors show that fibred knots cannot be untied by a finite sequence of \(t_m\) and \(\bar{t}_m\) moves if the even number \(m\) is greater than or equal to \(4\). They first check the changes of the HOMFLY polynomial for knots after applying two strand twistings. In terms of the crossing number and braid index of knots, they find an upper bound on the number of two strand twist operations to untie a knot if the knot has non-trivial HOMFLY polynomial. Moreover, they find an interesting result about the braid index of two-bridge knots related by a finite sequence of \(t_{2k}\)-moves.