Any smooth knot S^n R^n+2 is isotopic to a cubic knot contained in the canonical scaffolding of R^n+2

Abstract: The

n

-skeleton of the canonical cubulation

c a l C

of

m a t h b b R^{n + 2}

into unit cubes is called the {it canonical scaffolding}

c a l S

. In this paper, we prove that any smooth, compact, closed,

n

-dimensional submanifold of

m a t h b b R^{n + 2}

with trivial normal bundle can be continuously isotoped by an ambient isotopy to a cubic submanifold contained in

c a l S

. In particular, any smooth knot

m a t h b b S^{n} h o o k r i g h t a r r o w m a t h b b R^{n + 2}

can be continuously isotoped to a knot contained in

c a l S

.

Review text

The canonical cubulation \(\mathcal{C}\) of \(\mathbb{R}^{n+2}\) is the decomposition into hypercubes which are the images of the unit cube \(I^{n+2}=\{(x_1, \ldots, x_{n+2}) \mid 0\leq x_i \leq1\}\) by translations by vectors with integer coefficients. The canonical scaffolding of \(\mathbb{R}^{n+2}\), denoted by \(\mathcal{S}\), is the \(n\)-skeleton of \(\mathcal{C}\) i.e. the union of all cubes of dimension \(n\) contained in the faces of the \((n+2)\)-cubes in \(\mathcal{C}\). The main results are as follows. Any smooth, compact, closed, \(n\)-dimensional submanifold of \(\mathbb{R}^{n+2}\) with trivial normal bundle can be continuously isotoped by an ambient isotopy of \(\mathbb{R}^{n+2}\) onto a cubic submanifold contained in \(\mathcal{S}\) (Theorem 2.9). In particular, any smooth knot \(\mathbb{S}^n \hookrightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+2}\) can be isotoped onto a cubic knot contained in \(\mathcal{S}\) (Theorem 3.1). Note that Theorem 3.1 implies that smooth knots can be embedded as cubic sub-complexes of \(\mathbb{R}^{n+2}\), which in turn implies the fact that smooth knots can be triangulated by a PL triangulation; see \textit{S. Cairns} [Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 67, 389--390 (1961; Zbl 0192.29901)].

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