The number of Reidemeister Moves Needed for Unknotting

dc.creatorHass, Joel
dc.creatorLagarias, Jeffrey C.
dc.date1998-07-02
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T05:25:15Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T05:25:15Z
dc.descriptionThere is a positive constant $c_1$ such that for any diagram $D$ representing the unknot, there is a sequence of at most $2^{c_1 n}$ Reidemeister moves that will convert it to a trivial knot diagram, $n$ is the number of crossings in $D$. A similar result holds for elementary moves on a polygonal knot $K$ embedded in the 1-skeleton of the interior of a compact, orientable, triangulated $PL$ 3-manifold $M$. There is a positive constant $c_2$ such that for each $t \geq 1$, if $M$ consists of $t$ tetrahedra, and $K$ is unknotted, then there is a sequence of at most $2^{c_2 t}$ elementary moves in $M$ which transforms $K$ to a triangle contained inside one tetrahedron of $M$. We obtain explicit values for $c_1$ and $c_2$.
dc.description48 pages, 14 figures
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/math/9807012
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/math/9807012
dc.identifierJ. Amer. Math. Soc. 14 (2001), 399--428.
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/77114
dc.subjectGeometric Topology
dc.subject57M25; 68Q25
dc.titleThe number of Reidemeister Moves Needed for Unknotting
dc.typetext

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