Energy of a knot (Q809410)

The author defines a continuous energy functional E on the space of embeddings f: \(S^ 1\to {\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) of class \({\mathcal C}^ 2\) such that \(| f'(t)| =1\) for all \(t\in S^ 1\) (parametrized knots). The following properties of E are proved: (1) E(f)\(\geq -2\) and \(E(i)=0\) for the standard planar embedding. (It does not seem clear whether -2 is the best lower bound). (2) E(f) can be represented by an integral over \(S^ 1\times S^ 1.\) (3) If E(f) is bounded above, then points with fixed distance in \(S^ 1\) cannot map arbitrarily close. This means that E blows up for curves with self-intersections. The main result is concerned with the functional \(E_{\lambda B}=E+\lambda B\), where B(f)\(\geq 1\) is the total squared curvature, \(\lambda >0:\) (4) Given \(\lambda >0\) and \(\alpha\geq \lambda -2\). Then there are only finitely many isotopy classes of knots which admit representatives f as above for which \(E_{\lambda B}(f)\leq \alpha\).