arXiv research

Character variety of Borromean link solved, Alexander polynomial formula found.

Method detects intersections between ellipses for Borromean linking.

Paper computes hyperbolic structure of Borromean rings complement.

It is known that every oriented integral homology 3-sphere can be obtained from S^3 by a finite sequence of Borromean surgeries. We give an explicit formula for the variation of the Casson invariant under such a surgery move. The formula involves simple classical invariants, namely the framing, linking number and Milno…

We refine Matveev's result asserting that any two closed oriented 3-manifolds can be related by a sequence of borromean surgeries if and only if they have isomorphic first homology groups and linking pairings. Indeed, a borromean surgery induces a canonical isomorphism between the first homology groups of the involved …

New formulas link Milnor invariants to Heegaard Floer homology.

In 1986, Matveev defined the notion of Borromean surgery for closed oriented 3-manifolds and showed that the equivalence relation generated by this move is characterized by the pair (first betti number, linking form up to isomorphism). We explain how this extends for 3-manifolds with spin structure if we replace the li…

Explains the Borromean rings, icosahedron, and Poincaré homology sphere.

A long-standing conjecture due to Michael Freedman asserts that the 4-dimensional topological surgery conjecture fails for non-abelian free groups, or equivalently that a family of canonical examples of links (the generalized Borromean rings) are not A-B slice. A stronger version of the conjecture, that the Borromean r…

The paper finds canonical triangulations for specific 3-manifolds.

Matveev introduced Borromean surgery on 3-manifolds, and proved that the equivalence relation on closed, oriented 3-manifolds generated by Borromean surgeries is characterized by the first homology group and the torsion linking pairing. Massuyeau generalized this result to closed, spin 3-manifolds, and the second autho…

Study shows colored Jones invariants limit to link volumes.

We prove the volume conjecture for an infinite family of links called Whitehead chains that generalizes both the Whitehead link and the Borromean rings.

The paper extends BPS invariants for framed knots and links.

We prove that every complete finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ that is tessellated into (embedded) right-angled regular polyhedra (dodecahedra or ideal octahedra) embeds geodesically in a complete finite-volume connected orientable hyperbolic 4-manifold $W$, which is also tessellated into right-angled regular pol…

We extend the well-known Borromean and Brunnian rings to new higher order versions. Then we suggest an extension of the connection between Efimov states in cold gases and Borromean and Brunnian rings to these new higher order links. This gives rise to a whole new hierarchy of possible states with Efimov states at the b…

We use an estimate on the Thurston--Bennequin invariant of a Legendrian link in terms of its Kauffman-polynomial to show that links of topological unknots, e.g. the Borromean rings or the Whithead link, may not be represented by Legendrian links of Legendrian unknots.

This paper proves that convex Brunnian links exist for every dimension $n \geq 3$ by constructing explicit examples. These examples are three-component links which are higher-dimensional generalizations of the Borromean rings.

We describe an algorithm for computing boundary slopes of 2-bridge links. As an example, we work out the slopes of the links obtained by 1/k surgery on one component of the Borromean rings. A table of all boundary slopes of all 2-bridge links with 10 or less crossings is also included.

Study homotopy groups of spaces of long links and knots, finding new generators.

New method fractures hyperbolic manifolds using cone singularities.

Three disjoint rays in euclidean 3-space form Borromean rays provided their union is knotted, but the union of any two components is unknotted. We construct infinitely many Borromean rays, uncountably many of which are pairwise inequivalent. We obtain uncountably many Borromean hyperplanes.

Researchers found only one hyperbolic structure for Borromean rings.

We show that if K is any knot whose Ozsvath-Szabo concordance invariant tau(K) is positive, the all-positive Whitehead double of any iterated Bing double of K is topologically but not smoothly slice. We also show that the all-positive Whitehead double of any iterated Bing double of the Hopf link (e.g., the all-positive…

Profinite rigidity proven for many hyperbolic manifolds.

We will develop various methods, some are of geometric nature and some are of algebraic nature, to detect the various achiralities of knots and links in $S^3$. For example, we show that the twisted Whitehead double of a knot is achiral if and only if the double is the unknot or the figure eight knot, and we show that a…

Using the recently proposed differential hierarchy (Z-expansion) technique, we obtain a general expression for the HOMFLY polynomials in two arbitrary symmetric representations of link families, including Whitehead and Borromean links. Among other things, this allows us to check and confirm the recent conjecture of arX…

A link in the 3-sphere is called (smoothly) slice if its components bound disjoint smoothly embedded disks in the 4-ball. More generally, given a 4-manifold M with a distinguished circle in its boundary, a link in the 3-sphere is called M-slice if its components bound in the 4-ball disjoint embedded copies of M. A 4-ma…

Cannon, Floyd and Parry have studied the modulus of finite subdivision rules extensively. We investigate the properties of the modulus of subdivision rules with linear and exponential growth at every vertex, using barycentric subdivision and a subdivision rule for the Borromean rings as examples. We show that the subdi…

We present the Round Handle Problem, proposed by Freedman and Krushkal. It asks whether a collection of links, which contains the Generalised Borromean Rings, are slice in a 4-manifold R constructed from adding round handles to the four ball. A negative answer would contradict the union of the surgery conjecture and th…

We study the space of "link maps": the space of maps of a disjoint union of compact, closed manifolds P_1, . . ., P_k into a manifold N whose images are pairwise disjoint. We apply the manifold calculus of functors developed by Goodwillie and Weiss to study the difference between it and its linear and quadratic approxi…

This paper calculates the skein algebra of the Borromean rings complement.

The differential expansion is one of the key structures reflecting group theory properties of colored knot polynomials, which also becomes an important tool for evaluation of non-trivial Racah matrices. This makes highly desirable its extension from knots to links, which, however, requires knowledge of the $6j$-symbols…

Tying knots and linking microscopic loops of polymers, macromolecules, or defect lines in complex materials is a challenging task for material scientists. We demonstrate the knotting of microscopic topological defect lines in chiral nematic liquid crystal colloids into knots and links of arbitrary complexity by using l…

We use topological surgery in dimension four to give sufficient conditions for the zero framed surgery manifold of a 3-component link to be homology cobordant to the 3-torus, which arises from zero framed surgery on the Borromean rings, via a topological homology cobordism preserving the homotopy classes of the meridia…

We introduce an alternative approach to the third order helicity of a volume preserving vector field $B$, which leads us to a lower bound for the $L^2$-energy of $B$. The proposed approach exploits correspondence between the Milnor $\barμ_{123}$-invariant for 3-component links and the homotopy invariants of maps to con…

Researchers introduce a family of hyperbolic Brunnian links and calculate their volumes.

We prove the perhaps surprising result that given any three polygonal unknots in $\R^3$, then we may form the Borromean rings out of them through rigid motions of $\R^3$ applied to the individual components together with possible scaling of the components. We also prove that if at least two of the unknots are planar, t…

In this sequel we extend the derivation of the third order helicity to magnetic fields supported on unlinked domains in 3-space. The formula is expressed in terms of generators of the deRham cohomology of the configuration space of three points in $\R^3$, which is a more practical domain from the perspective of applica…

Let $M_λ$ be the $λ$-component Milnor link. For $λ\ge 3$, we determine completely when a finite slope surgery along $M_λ$ yields a lens space including $S^3$ and $S^1\times S^2$, where {\it finite slope surgery} implies that a surgery coefficient of every component is not $\infty$. For $λ=3$ (i.e.\ the Borromean rings)…

In 1974, Gehring posed the problem of minimizing the length of two linked curves separated by unit distance. This constraint can be viewed as a measure of thickness for links, and the ratio of length over thickness as the ropelength. In this paper we refine Gehring's problem to deal with links in a fixed link-homotopy …

We obtain a formula for the Turaev-Viro invariants of a link complement in terms of values of the colored Jones polynomial of the link. As an application we give the first examples for which the volume conjecture of Chen and the third named author\,\cite{Chen-Yang} is verified. Namely, we show that the asymptotics of t…

Study on bending deformations in hyperbolic manifolds, generalizing Johnson and Millson's work.

Researchers find optimal configurations of complex knots and links.

The Jacobi identity is the key relation in the definition of a Lie algebra. In the last decade, it also appeared at the heart of the theory of finite type invariants of knots, links and 3-manifolds (and is there called the IHX-relation). In addition, this relation was recently found to arise naturally in a theory of em…

Identifies a mod-$p$ triple cup product for rational homology 3-spheres with specific first homology.

A single qubit may be represented on the Bloch sphere or similarly on the $3$-sphere $S^3$. Our goal is to dress this correspondence by converting the language of universal quantum computing (UQC) to that of $3$-manifolds. A magic state and the Pauli group acting on it define a model of UQC as a positive operator-value…

Study SL(2,C) character schemes for finitely generated groups.