Short ropes and long knots

DOI10.1016/S0040-9383(00)00047-1MaRDI QIDQ1599623zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Jacob Mostovoy

Publication date 24 February 2004

Published in Topology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9810040

zbMATH Keywords

classifying spacesknotsropes

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Embeddings in differential topology (57R40) Spaces of embeddings and immersions (58D10)

Abstract: A rope is a non-singular embedding of a closed interval into R^3, which sends the ends of the interval to some fixed points A and B such that |AB|=1. A rope is short if its length is less than 3. The main result of the paper is that the fundamental group of the space of short ropes is naturally isomorphic to the group completion of the semigroup of knots.

Review text

The paper studies spaces of non-singular embeddings of a closed interval into \({\mathbb R}^3\). A rope is a non-singular \(C^1\)-smooth embedding \(r: [0,1] \to {\mathbb R}^3\) such that the end points \(0\) and \(1\) are sent to two fixed points \(A\) and \(B\), respectively. A rope is short if it is of length \(3\). The space of all ropes is endowed with the \(C^1\)-topology; for \(\varepsilon>0\), let \(B_\varepsilon\) be the subspace of ropes whose length is strictly less than \(1+\varepsilon\). Let \(K\) be the monoid of isotopy classes of knots in \(S^3\). The main results of the paper under review are: (1) For \(0<\varepsilon\leq 2\), there is a homomorphism from \(K\to \pi_1(B_\varepsilon)\) which is a group completion. (2) For \(\varepsilon>2\), the space \(B_\varepsilon\) is simply connected.

Recommendations

• The space of short ropes and the classifying space of the space of long knots
• On the homology of the space of knots
• Topology of knot spaces in dimension 3
• Energy of a knot
• On the minimum ropelength of knots and links

Cited in

(6)

• The space of short ropes and the classifying space of the space of long knots
• Long line knots
• Hanging Rope of Minimum Elongation
• On the delooping of (framed) embedding spaces
• Delooping the functor calculus tower
• Embedding spaces, configuration spaces and Vassiliev invariants

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