Complementary regions of knot and link diagrams (Q659650)

The faces of a connected reduced link diagram divide the sphere into a collection of \(n\)-gons. This paper investigates which collections of \(n\)-gons can arise from link diagrams. In more detail, a strictly increasing sequence of integers \((a_1, a_2, a_3, \dots )\), with \(a_1 \geq 2\), is said to be universal for knots and links if every knot and link has a reduced diagram in which each face is an \(a_n\)-gon for some \(a_n\) in the sequence. (Note that not every \(a_n\) in the sequence needs to be realized as an \(a_n\)-gon in the diagram.) It is shown that the following infinite sequences are universal for knots and links: \((3,5,7,9, \dots)\), \((2,n,n+1,n+2,\dots)\) for each \(n \geq 3\), and \((3,n,n+1,n+2,\dots)\) for each \(n \geq 4\). In addition, it is shown that the finite sequences \((2,4,5)\), and \((3,4,n)\) for \(n\geq 5\) are universal for knots and links. Further results on the collection of \(n\)-gons that can arise from knot and link diagrams are given. For example, it is shown that every knot has a diagram with exactly two \(3\)-gons with all other faces even; and it is shown that only sequences with a non-trivial common divisor \(k\) arise from links with at least \(k\) components. The paper concludes with a short list of questions.