Intrinsic knotting and linking of complete graphs

DOI10.2140/AGT.2002.2.371MaRDI QIDQ1597785zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Erica Flapan

Publication date 3 June 2002

Published in Algebraic \& Geometric Topology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0205231, https://eudml.org/doc/122176, http://www.emis.de/journals/UW/agt/AGTVol2/agt-2-17.abs.html

zbMATH Keywords

Conway polynomialembedded graphsintrinsic linking

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Planar graphs; geometric and topological aspects of graph theory (05C10) Relations of low-dimensional topology with graph theory (57M15)

Abstract: We show that for every m in N, there exists an n in N such that every embedding of the complete graph K_n in R^3 contains a link of two components whose linking number is at least m. Furthermore, there exists an r in N such that every embedding of K_r in R^3 contains a knot Q with |a_2(Q)| > m-1, where a_2(Q) denotes the second coefficient of the Conway polynomial of Q.

Review text

In [\textit{J. H. Conway} and \textit{C. McA. Gordon}, J. Graph Theory 7, 445-453 (1983; Zbl 0524.05028)] it is proved that every embedding in \(\mathbb R^3\) of the complete graph on six (resp. seven) vertices, \(K_6\) (resp. \(K_7\)), is intrinsically linked (resp. intrinsically knotted), i.e. it contains a non-trivial link of two components (resp. a nontrivial knot). By making use of results and techniques developed in [the author with \textit{R. Naimi} and \textit{J. Pommersheim}, Topology Appl. 115, No. 2, 239-246 (2001; Zbl 0988.57003)] (where \(K_{10}\) is proved to be intrinsically triple linked), the present paper yields an interesting generalization of Conway and Gordon's Theorem: for every \(m \in \mathbb N,\) the author shows the existence of a suitable \(n \in \mathbb N\) (resp. \(r \in \mathbb N\)) such that every embedding in \(\mathbb R^3\) of \(K_n\) (resp. \(K_r\)) contains a link of two components whose linking number is at least \(m\) (resp. a knot \(Q\) with \(|a_2(Q)|\geq m\), where \(|a_2(Q)|\) denotes the second coefficient of the Conway polynomial of \(Q\)). \noindent Note that \(|a_2(Q)|\) results to be a convenient measure for knot complexity, since it relates knotting and linking [see \textit{L. H. Kauffman}, Topology 20, 101-108 (1981; Zbl 0456.57004) for details].

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Cited in

(32)

• Counting links in complete graphs
• Knots in certain spatial graphs
• Knots and links in certain spatial complete graphs
• Some Ramsey-type results on intrinsic linking of n-complexes
• Generalization of the Conway-Gordon theorem and intrinsic linking on complete graphs
• Weakly linked embeddings of pairs of complete graphs in \(\mathbb{R}^3\)
• Generalizations of the Conway-Gordon theorems and intrinsic knotting on complete graphs
• Counting links and knots in complete graphs
• Intrinsically linked graphs and even linking number
• Knots and links in spatial graphs: a survey
• Intrinsically linked graphs with knotted components
• INTRINSICALLY n-LINKED COMPLETE BIPARTITE GRAPHS
• Intrinsic knotting and linking of almost complete graphs
• Every graph has an embedding in 𝑆³ containing no non-hyperbolic knot
• Intrinsically knotted graphs
• Knots in the canonical book representation of complete graphs
• A LARGE COMPLETE GRAPH IN A SPACE CONTAINS A LINK WITH LARGE LINK INVARIANT
• Intrinsically knotted and 4-linked directed graphs
• Proving n-dimensional linking in complete n-complexes in (2n+1)-dimensional space
• Most graphs are knotted
• Intrinsic linking and knotting are arbitrarily complex in directed graphs
• Intrinsic linking with linking numbers of specified divisibility
• SOME RESULTS ON INTRINSICALLY KNOTTED GRAPHS
• Triviality of the function _2 for spatial imbeddings of complete graphs
• Linear embeddings of \(K_{9}\) are triple linked
• Intrinsically triple linked complete graphs
• Some `converses' to intrinsic linking theorems
• Linking number of monotonic cycles in random book embeddings of complete graphs
• Intrinsically n-linked complete graphs
• Intrinsic linking and knotting of graphs in arbitrary 3-manifolds
• Knotting and linking in the Petersen family
• A graph-theoretic approach to a partial order of knots and links

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