MÖBIUS TRANSFORMATIONS OF POLYGONS AND PARTITIONS OF 3-SPACE

DOI10.1142/S0218216508006671zbMATH Open1160.57008arXivmath/0602466MaRDI QIDQ3602968FDOQ3602968

Authors: Joshua Tokle, Richard Randell, Jonathan K. Simon 

Publication date: 12 February 2009

Published in: Journal of Knot Theory and Its Ramifications (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The image of a polygonal knot K under a spherical inversion of R^3 (union infinity) is a simple closed curve made of arcs of circles, having the same knot type as the mirror image of K. Suppose we reconnect the vertices of the inverted polygon with straight lines, making a new polygon. This may be a different knot type. For example, a certain 7-segment figure-8 knot can be transformed to a figure-8 knot, right and left handed trefoils, or an unknot, by selecting different inverting spheres. Which knot types can be obtained from a given original polygon K under this process? We show that for large n, almost all n-segment knot types cannot be reached from one initial n-segment polygon, using a single inversion or even the whole Mobius group. The number of knot types arising from an n-vertex polygon is bounded by the number of complementary domains of a certain system of n(n-3)/2 round 2-spheres in R^3. We show the number of domains is at most polynomial in the number of spheres. In the analysis, we obtain an exact formula for the number of complementary domains. On the other hand, the number of knot types that can be represented by n-segment polygons is exponential in n.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0602466

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zbMATH Keywords

knot energypolygonal knotspherical inversionMöbius transformation

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Cites Work

• Title not available (Why is that?)
• POLYGONAL APPROXIMATION AND ENERGY OF SMOOTH KNOTS
• Homotopy types of subspace arrangements via diagrams of spaces
• GEOMETRIC KNOT SPACES AND POLYGONAL ISOTOPY
• The growth of the number of prime knots

Cited In (2)

• Images of circles, lines, balls and half-planes under Möbius transformations
• Axes of Möbius transformations in \(H_{3}\)

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