On the cost function associated with Legendrian knots
A Legendrian knot in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) with the standard contact structure \(\xi =\text{ker} (dz-ydx)\) is a smooth embedding of \(\mathbb{S}^1\) in\(\mathbb{R}^3\) such that its image is tangent to the contact plane at each point. Two Legendrian knots are called Legendrian isotopic if there is a smooth 1-parameter family of Legendrian knots starting with one and ending with the other. The authors introduce a non-negative integer-valued function that measures the obstruction for converting a topological isotopy between two Legendrian knots into a Legendrian isotopy. They refer to this function as the Cost function and show that the Cost function induces a metric on the set of topologically isotopic Legendrian knots. Hence, the set of topologically isotopic Legendrian knots can be seen as a graph with path-metric given by the Cost function. Legendrian simple knot types are shown to be characterized using the Cost function. The authors compute the Cost function for Legendrian simple knots (for example torus knots) and they note the behavior of the Cost function for twist knots and cables of torus knots (some of which are Legendrian non-simple). They also construct examples of Legendrian representatives of 2-bridge knots and compute the Cost between them. Further, they investigate the behavior of the Cost function under the connected sum operation.
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