Session I.4 - Computational Geometry and Topology
Wednesday, June 14, 17:00 ~ 17:30
Gordian Unlinks
Jose Ayala Hoffmann
Universidad de Tarapacá, Chile - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
A Gordian unlink is a finite number of not topologically linked unknots with prescribed length and thickness that cannot be disentangled to the trivial link by an isotopy preserving length and thickness throughout.
In this talk, we present the first examples of Gordian unlinks. As a consequence, we detect the existence of isotopy classes of thick unknots different from those in classical knot theory. More generally, we present a one-parameter family of Gordian unlinks with thickness ranging in [1, 2) to conclude that thinner normal tubes lead to different rope geometry from the ones so far considered.