# Knot Theory

Author: Charles Livingston

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9780883850275

Category: Mathematics

Page: 240

View: 7458

This book uses only linear algebra and basic group theory to study the properties of knots.

# Teaching and Learning of Knot Theory in School Mathematics

Author: Akio Kawauchi,Tomoko Yanagimoto

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

ISBN: 4431541381

Category: Mathematics

Page: 188

View: 7532

​This book is the result of a joint venture between Professor Akio Kawauchi, Osaka City University, well-known for his research in knot theory, and the Osaka study group of mathematics education, founded by Professor Hirokazu Okamori and now chaired by his successor Professor Tomoko Yanagimoto, Osaka Kyoiku University. The seven chapters address the teaching and learning of knot theory from several perspectives. Readers will find an extremely clear and concise introduction to the fundamentals of knot theory, an overview of curricular developments in Japan, and in particular a series of teaching experiments at all levels which not only demonstrate the creativity and the professional expertise of the members of the study group, but also give a lively impression of students’ learning processes. In addition the reports show that elementary knot theory is not just a preparation for advanced knot theory but also an excellent means to develop spatial thinking. The book can be highly recommended for several reasons: First of all, and that is the main intention of the book, it serves as a comprehensive text for teaching and learning knot theory. Moreover it provides a model for cooperation between mathematicians and mathematics educators based on substantial mathematics. And finally it is a thorough introduction to the Japanese art of lesson studies–again in the context of substantial mathematics.

# Applications of Knot Theory

American Mathematical Society, Short Course, January 4-5, 2008, San Diego, California

Author: American Mathematical Society. Short course,Dorothy Buck

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821844660

Category: Mathematics

Page: 186

View: 439

This volume, based on a 2008 AMS Short Course, offers a crash course in knot theory that will stimulate further study of this exciting field. Three introductory chapters are followed by three more advanced chapters examining applications of knot theory to physics, the use of topology in DNA nanotechnology, and the statistical and energetic properties of knots and their relation to molecular biology. The book offers a useful bridge from early graduate school topics to more advanced applications.

# Parametrized Knot Theory

Author: Stanley Ocken

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821818708

Category: Mathematics

Page: 114

View: 886

# History and Science of Knots

Author: J C Turner,P van de Griend

Publisher: World Scientific

ISBN: 9814499641

Category: Mathematics

Page: 464

View: 7199

This book brings together twenty essays on diverse topics in the history and science of knots. It is divided into five parts, which deal respectively with knots in prehistory and antiquity, non-European traditions, working knots, the developing science of knots, and decorative and other aspects of knots. Its authors include archaeologists who write on knots found in digs of ancient sites (one describes the knots used by the recently discovered Ice Man); practical knotters who have studied the history and uses of knots at sea, for fishing and for various life support activities; a historian of lace; a computer scientist writing on computer classification of doilies; and mathematicians who describe the history of knot theories from the eighteenth century to the present day. In view of the explosion of mathematical theories of knots in the past decade, with consequential new and important scientific applications, this book is timely in setting down a brief, fragmentary history of mankind's oldest and most useful technical and decorative device — the knot. Contents:Prehistory and Antiquity:Pleistocene KnottingWhy Knot? — Some Speculations on the First KnotsOn Knots and Swamps — Knots in European PrehistoryAncient Egyptian Rope and KnotsNon-European Traditions:The Peruvian QuipuThe Art of Chinese Knots Works: A Short HistoryInuit KnotsWorking Knots:Knots at SeaA History of Life Support KnotsTowards a Science of Knots?:Studies on the Behaviour of KnotsA History of Topological Knot Theory of KnotsTramblesCrochet Work — History and Computer ApplicationsDecorative Knots and Other Aspects:The History of MacraméA History of LaceHeraldic KnotsOn the True Love Knotand other papers Readership: Mathematicians, archeologists, social historians and general readers. keywords:Antiquit;Braiding;Climbing;Heraldry;History;Knots;Lace;Mariners;Prehistory;Quipus;Science;Theory;Topology;Knotting, Pleistocene;Egyptian;Inuit;Chinese;Mountaineering, Topological Knot Theory;Knot Theories;Quipo Knot Mathematics;Knot Strength Efficiency;Heraldic;True Love;Crochet;Computer Aided Design;Trambles “… it is a veritable compendium of information about every aspects of knots, from their links with quantum theory to attempts to measure their strength when tying climbing ropes together … the huge scope of this book makes it one I have turned to many times, for many different purposes.” New Scientists “I enjoyed browsing through all the chapters. They contain material that a mathematician would not normally come across in his work.” The Mathematical Intelligencer

# An Invitation to Knot Theory

Virtual and Classical

Author: Heather A. Dye

Publisher: CRC Press

ISBN: 1315360098

Category: Mathematics

Page: 256

View: 7150

The Only Undergraduate Textbook to Teach Both Classical and Virtual Knot Theory An Invitation to Knot Theory: Virtual and Classical gives advanced undergraduate students a gentle introduction to the field of virtual knot theory and mathematical research. It provides the foundation for students to research knot theory and read journal articles on their own. Each chapter includes numerous examples, problems, projects, and suggested readings from research papers. The proofs are written as simply as possible using combinatorial approaches, equivalence classes, and linear algebra. The text begins with an introduction to virtual knots and counted invariants. It then covers the normalized f-polynomial (Jones polynomial) and other skein invariants before discussing algebraic invariants, such as the quandle and biquandle. The book concludes with two applications of virtual knots: textiles and quantum computation.

# Applications of Knot Theory

American Mathematical Society, Short Course, January 4-5, 2008, San Diego, California

Author: American Mathematical Society. Short course,Dorothy Buck

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821844660

Category: Mathematics

Page: 186

View: 639

This volume, based on a 2008 AMS Short Course, offers a crash course in knot theory that will stimulate further study of this exciting field. Three introductory chapters are followed by three more advanced chapters examining applications of knot theory to physics, the use of topology in DNA nanotechnology, and the statistical and energetic properties of knots and their relation to molecular biology. The book offers a useful bridge from early graduate school topics to more advanced applications.

# Why Knot?

An Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Knots

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

ISBN: 9781931914222

Category: Mathematics

Page: 100

View: 3345

Colin Adams, well-known for his advanced research in topology and knot theory, is the author of this exciting new book that brings his findings and his passion for the subject to a more general audience. This beautifully illustrated comic book is appropriate for many mathematics courses at the undergraduate level such as liberal arts math, and topology. Additionally, the book could easily challenge high school students in math clubs or honors math courses and is perfect for the lay math enthusiast. Each copy of Why Knot? is packaged with a plastic manipulative called the Tangle R. Adams uses the Tangle because "you can open it up, tie it in a knot and then close it up again." The Tangle is the ultimate tool for knot theory because knots are defined in mathematics as being closed on a loop. Readers use the Tangle to complete the experiments throughout the brief volume. Adams also presents a illustrative and engaging history of knot theory from its early role in chemistry to modern applications such as DNA research, dynamical systems, and fluid mechanics. Real math, unreal fun!

# Braid and Knot Theory in Dimension Four

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821829696

Category: Mathematics

Page: 313

View: 8602

Braid theory and knot theory are related via two famous results due to Alexander and Markov. Alexander's theorem states that any knot or link can be put into braid form. Markov's theorem gives necessary and sufficient conditions to conclude that two braids represent the same knot or link. Thus, one can use braid theory to study knot theory and vice versa. In this book, the author generalizes braid theory to dimension four. He develops the theory of surface braids and applies it to study surface links. In particular, the generalized Alexander and Markov theorems in dimension four are given. This book is the first to contain a complete proof of the generalized Markov theorem. Surface links are studied via the motion picture method, and some important techniques of this method are studied.For surface braids, various methods to describe them are introduced and developed: the motion picture method, the chart description, the braid monodromy, and the braid system. These tools are fundamental to understanding and computing invariants of surface braids and surface links. Included is a table of knotted surfaces with a computation of Alexander polynomials. Braid techniques are extended to represent link homotopy classes. The book is geared toward a wide audience, from graduate students to specialists. It would make a suitable text for a graduate course and a valuable resource for researchers.

# The Interface of Knots and Physics

American Mathematical Society Short Course, January 2-3, 1995, San Francisco, California

Author: Louis H. Kauffman,American Mathematical Society

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821803808

Category: Science

Page: 208

View: 1269

This book is the result of an AMS Short Course on Knots and Physics that was held in San Francisco (January 1994). The range of the course went beyond knots to the study of invariants of low dimensional manifolds and extensions of this work to four manifolds and to higher dimensions. The authors use ideas and methods of mathematical physics to extract topological information about knots and manifolds. Features: A basic introduction to knot polynomials in relation to statistical link invariants. Concise introductions to topological quantum field theories and to the role of knot theory in quantum gravity. Knots and Physics would be an excellent supplement to a course on algebraic topology or a physics course on field theory.

# Explorations in Topology

Map Coloring, Surfaces and Knots

Author: David Gay

Publisher: Elsevier

ISBN: 9780080492667

Category: Mathematics

Page: 352

View: 8441

Explorations in Topology gives students a rich experience with low-dimensional topology, enhances their geometrical and topological intuition, empowers them with new approaches to solving problems, and provides them with experiences that would help them make sense of a future, more formal topology course. The innovative story-line style of the text models the problems-solving process, presents the development of concepts in a natural way, and through its informality seduces the reader into engagement with the material. The end-of-chapter Investigations give the reader opportunities to work on a variety of open-ended, non-routine problems, and, through a modified "Moore method", to make conjectures from which theorems emerge. The students themselves emerge from these experiences owning concepts and results. The end-of-chapter Notes provide historical background to the chapter’s ideas, introduce standard terminology, and make connections with mainstream mathematics. The final chapter of projects provides opportunities for continued involvement in "research" beyond the topics of the book. * Students begin to solve substantial problems right from the start * Ideas unfold through the context of a storyline, and students become actively involved * The text models the problem-solving process, presents the development of concepts in a natural way, and helps the reader engage with the material

# Quantum Topology

Author: Louis H. Kauffman,Randy A. Baadhio

Publisher: World Scientific

ISBN: 9789810225759

Category: Mathematics

Page: 375

View: 3267

This book constitutes a review volume on the relatively new subject of Quantum Topology. Quantum Topology has its inception in the 1984/1985 discoveries of new invariants of knots and links (Jones, Homfly and Kauffman polynomials). These invariants were rapidly connected with quantum groups and methods in statistical mechanics. This was followed by Edward Witten's introduction of methods of quantum field theory into the subject and the formulation by Witten and Michael Atiyah of the concept of topological quantum field theories.This book is a review volume of on-going research activity. The papers derive from talks given at the Special Session on Knot and Topological Quantum Field Theory of the American Mathematical Society held at Dayton, Ohio in the fall of 1992. The book consists of a self-contained article by Kauffman, entitled Introduction to Quantum Topology and eighteen research articles by participants in the special session.This book should provide a useful source of ideas and results for anyone interested in the interface between topology and quantum field theory.

# Knots, Molecules, and the Universe

Author: Erica Flapan

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 1470425351

Category: Algebraic topology

Page: 386

View: 5796

This book is an elementary introduction to geometric topology and its applications to chemistry, molecular biology, and cosmology. It does not assume any mathematical or scientific background, sophistication, or even motivation to study mathematics. It is meant to be fun and engaging while drawing students in to learn about fundamental topological and geometric ideas. Though the book can be read and enjoyed by nonmathematicians, college students, or even eager high school students, it is intended to be used as an undergraduate textbook. The book is divided into three parts corresponding to the three areas referred to in the title. Part 1 develops techniques that enable two- and three-dimensional creatures to visualize possible shapes for their universe and to use topological and geometric properties to distinguish one such space from another. Part 2 is an introduction to knot theory with an emphasis on invariants. Part 3 presents applications of topology and geometry to molecular symmetries, DNA, and proteins. Each chapter ends with exercises that allow for better understanding of the material. The style of the book is informal and lively. Though all of the definitions and theorems are explicitly stated, they are given in an intuitive rather than a rigorous form, with several hundreds of figures illustrating the exposition. This allows students to develop intuition about topology and geometry without getting bogged down in technical details.

# Low Dimensional Topology

Author: Samuel J. Lomonaco

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821850164

Category: Mathematics

Page: 346

View: 9873

This volume arose from a special session on Low Dimensional Topology organized and conducted by Dr. Lomonaco at the American Mathematical Society meeting held in San Francisco, California, January 7-11, 1981.

# An Index of a Graph with Applications to Knot Theory

Author: Kunio Murasugi,Józef Przytycki

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821825704

Category: Mathematics

Page: 101

View: 5375

This book presents a remarkable application of graph theory to knot theory. In knot theory, there are a number of easily defined geometric invariants that are extremely difficult to compute; the braid index of a knot or link is one example. The authors evaluate the braid index for many knots and links using the generalized Jones polynomial and the index of a graph, a new invariant introduced here. This invariant, which is determined algorithmically, is likely to be of particular interest to computer scientists.

# The Knot Book

An Elementary Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Knots

Publisher: W. H. Freeman

ISBN: 9780716742197

Category: Mathematics

Page: 306

View: 4378

Over a century old, knot theory is today one of the most active areas of modern mathematics. The study of knots has led to important applications in DNA research and the synthesis of new molecules, and has had a significant impact on statistical mechanics and quantum field theory. Colin Adams’s The Knot Book is the first book to make cutting-edge research in knot theory accessible to a non-specialist audience. Starting with the simplest knots, Adams guides readers through increasingly more intricate twists and turns of knot theory, exploring problems and theorems mathematicians can now solve, as well as those that remain open. He also explores how knot theory is providing important insights in biology, chemistry, physics, and other fields. The new paperback edition has been updated to include the latest research results, and includes hundreds of illustrations of knots, as well as worked examples, exercises and problems. With a simple piece of string, an elementary mathematical background, and The Knot Book, anyone can start learning about some of the most advanced ideas in contemporary mathematics.

# Equivariant, Almost-arborescent Representations of Open Simply-connected 3-manifolds

A Finiteness Result

Author: Valentin Poenaru,C. Tanasi

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821834606

Category: Mathematics

Page: 89

View: 4376

When one extends the (almost) collapsible pseudo-spine representation theorem for homotopy $3$-spheres [Po3] to open simply connected $3$-manifolds $V^3$, new phenomena appear: at the source of the representation, the set of double points is, generally speaking, no longer closed. We show that at the cost of replacing $V^3$ by $V_h^3 = \{V^3$ with very many holes $\}$, we can always find representations $X^2 \stackrel {f} {\rightarrow} V^3$ with $X^2$ locally finite and almost-arborescent, with $\Psi (f)=\Phi (f)$, with the open regular neighbourhood (the only one which is well-defined here) Nbd$(fX^2)=V^3_h$ and such that on any precompact tight transversal to the set of double lines, we have only finitely many limit points (of the set of double points).Moreover, if $V^3$ is the universal covering space of a closed $3$-manifold, $V^3=\widetilde M^3$, then we can find an $X^2$ with a free $\pi_1M^3$ action and having the equivariance property $f(gx)=gf(x)$, $g\in \pi_1M^3$. Having simultaneously all these properties for $X^2\stackrel{f} {\rightarrow} \widetilde M^3$ is one of the steps in the first author's program for proving that $\pi_1^\infty \widetilde M^3=[UNK]0$, [Po11, Po12]. Achieving equivariance is far from being straightforward, since $X^2$ is gotten starting from a tree of fundamental domains on which $\pi_1M^3$ cannot, generally speaking, act freely. So, in this paper we have both a representation theorem for general ($\pi_1=0$) $V^3$'s and a harder equivariant representation theorem for $\widetilde M^3$ (with $gfX^2=fX^2, \, g\in\pi_1M^3$), the proof of which is not a specialization of the first, 'easier' result.But, finiteness is achieved in both contexts. In a certain sense, this finiteness is a best possible result, since if the set of limit points in question is $\emptyset$ (i.e. if the set of double points is closed), then $\pi_1^\infty V_h^3$ (which is always equal to $\pi_1^\infty V^3$) is zero. In [PoTa2] it was also shown that when we insist on representing $V^3$ itself, rather than $V_h^3$, and if $V^3$ is wild ($\pi_1^\infty\not =0$), then the transversal structure of the set of double lines can exhibit chaotic dynamical behavior. Our finiteness theorem avoids chaos at the cost of a lot of redundancy (the same double point $(x, y)$ can be reached in many distinct ways starting from the singularities).

# MathHorizons

Author: N.A

Publisher: N.A

ISBN: N.A

Category: Mathematics

Page: N.A

View: 5679

# Subfactors and Knots

Author: Vaughan F. R. Jones,Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821807293

Category: Mathematics

Page: 113

View: 9406

This book is based on a set of lectures presented by the author at the NSF-CBMS Regional Conference, Applications of Operator Algebras to Knot Theory and Mathematical Physics, held at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in June 1988. The audience consisted of low-dimensional topologists and operator algebraists, so the speaker attempted to make the material comprehensible to both groups. He provides an extensive introduction to the theory of von Neumann algebras and to knot theory and braid groups.The presentation follows the historical development of the theory of subfactors and the ensuing applications to knot theory, including full proofs of some of the major results. The author treats in detail the Homfly and Kauffman polynomials, introduces statistical mechanical methods on knot diagrams, and attempts an analogy with conformal field theory. Written by one of the foremost mathematicians of the day, this book will give readers an appreciation of the unexpected interconnections between different parts of mathematics and physics.

# Interactions Between Hyperbolic Geometry, Quantum Topology, and Number Theory

Workshop, June 3-13, 2009, Conference, June 15-19, 2009, Columbia University, New Ork, NY

Author: Abhijit Champanerkar

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

ISBN: 0821849603

Category: Mathematics

Page: 257

View: 8405

This book is based on a 10-day workshop given by leading experts in hyperbolic geometry, quantum topology and number theory, in June 2009 at Columbia University. Each speaker gave a minicourse consisting of three or four lectures aimed at graduate students and recent PhDs. The proceedings of this enormously successful workshop can serve as an introduction to this active research area in a way that is expository and broadly accessible to graduate students. Although many ideas overlap, the twelve expository/research papers in this volume can be grouped into four rough categories: (1) different approaches to the Volume Conjecture, and relations between the main quantum and geometric invariants; (2) the geometry associated to triangulations of hyperbolic 3-manifolds; (3) arithmetic invariants of hyperbolic 3-manifolds; (4) quantum invariants associated to knots and hyperbolic 3-manifolds. The workshop, the conference that followed, and these proceedings continue a long tradition in quantum and geometric topology of bringing together ideas from diverse areas of mathematics and physics, and highlights the importance of collaborative research in tackling big problems that require expertise in disparate disciplines.