An unknotting tunnel in a 3-manifold with boundary is a properly embedded arc, the complement of an open neighborhood of which is a handlebody. A geodesic with endpoints on the cusp boundary of a hyperbolic 3-manifold and perpendicular to the cusp boundary is called a vertical geodesic. Given a vertical geodesic $\alpha $ in a hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$, we find sufficient conditions for it to be an unknotting tunnel. In particular, if $\alpha $ corresponds to a 4-bracelet, 5-bracelet or 6-bracelet in the universal cover and has short enough length, it must be an unknotting tunnel. Furthermore, we consider a vertical geodesic $\alpha $ that satisfies the elder sibling property, which means that in the universal cover, every horoball except the one centered at $\infty $ is connected to a larger horoball by a lift of $\alpha $. Such an $\alpha $ with length less than $\ln (2)$ is then shown to be an unknotting tunnel.

This paper discusses a flaw in Murasugi–Przytycki’s Memoir ‘An index of a graph with applications to knot theory’ [Mem. Amer. Math. Soc. 106 (1993)]. We point out and partly fix a gap occurring in the proof of Murasugi–Przytycki’s braid index inequalities involving the graph index. We explain why their notion of index fails to precisely reflect the reduction of Seifert circles by their diagram move, and redefine the index to account for that discrepancy.

Khovanov homology, an invariant of links in ${ \mathbb{R} }^{3} $, is a graded homology theory that categorifies the Jones polynomial in the sense that the graded Euler characteristic of the homology is the Jones polynomial. Asaeda et al. [‘Categorification of the Kauffman bracket skein module of $I$-bundles over surfaces’, Algebr. Geom. Topol. 4 (2004), 1177–1210] generalised this construction by defining a double graded homology theory that categorifies the Kauffman bracket skein module of links in $I$-bundles over surfaces, except for the surface $ \mathbb{R} {\mathrm{P} }^{2} $, where the construction fails due to strange behaviour of links when projected to the nonorientable surface $ \mathbb{R} {\mathrm{P} }^{2} $. This paper categorifies the missing case of the twisted $I$-bundle over $ \mathbb{R} {\mathrm{P} }^{2} $, $ \mathbb{R} {\mathrm{P} }^{2} \widetilde {\times } I\approx \mathbb{R} {\mathrm{P} }^{3} \setminus \{ \ast \} $, by redefining the differential in the Khovanov chain complex in a suitable manner.

We study a canonical spanning surface obtained from a knot or link diagram, depending on a given Kauffman state. We give a sufficient condition for the surface to be essential. By using the essential surface, we can deduce the triviality and splittability of a knot or link from its diagrams. This has been done on the extended knot or link class that includes all semiadequate, homogeneous knots and links, and most algebraic knots and links. In order to prove the main theorem, we extend Gabai’s Murasugi sum theorem to the case of nonorientable spanning surfaces.

We consider orientable closed connected 3-manifolds obtained by performing Dehn surgery on the components of some classical links such as Borromean rings and twisted Whitehead links. We find geometric presentations of their fundamental groups and describe many of them as 2-fold branched coverings of the 3-sphere. Finally, we obtain some topological applications on the manifolds given by exceptional surgeries on hyperbolic 2-bridge knots.

Given a diagram D of a knot K, we give easily computable bounds for Rasmussen’s concordance invariant s(K). The bounds are not independent of the diagram D chosen, but we show that for diagrams satisfying a given condition the bounds are tight. As a corollary we improve on previously known Bennequin-type bounds on the slice genus.

Garoufalidis and Levine introduced the homology cobordism group of homology cylinders over a surface. This group can be regarded as an enlargement of the mapping class group. Using torsion invariants, we show that the abelianization of this group is infinitely generated provided that the first Betti number of the surface is positive. In particular, this shows that the group is not perfect. This answers questions of Garoufalidis and Levine, and Goda and Sakasai. Furthermore, we show that the abelianization of the group has infinite rank for the case that the surface has more than one boundary component. These results also hold for the homology cylinder analogue of the Torelli group.

Clark et al. [‘The axiomatizability of topological prevarieties’, Adv. Math.218 (2008), 1604–1653] have shown that, for k≥2, there exists a Boolean topological graph that is k-colourable but not topologically k-colourable; that is, for every ϵ>0, it cannot be coloured by a paintbrush of width ϵ. We generalize this result to show that, for k≥2, there is a Boolean topological graph that is 2-colourable but not topologically k-colourable. This graph is an inverse limit of finite graphs which are shown to exist by an Erdős-style probabilistic argument of Hell and Nešetřil [‘The core of a graph’, Discrete Math.109 (1992), 117–126]. We use the fact that there exists a Boolean topological graph that is 2-colourable but not k-colourable, and some other results (some new and some previously known), to answer the question of which finitely generated topological residual classes of graphs are axiomatizable by universal Horn sentences. A more general version of this question was raised in the above-mentioned paper by Clark et al., and has been investigated by various authors for other structures.

We study naturality properties of the transverse invariant in knot Floer homology under contact (+1)-surgery. This can be used as a calculational tool for the transverse invariant. As a consequence, we show that the Eliashberg–Chekanov twist knots En are not transversely simple for n odd and n > 3.

The group of any nontrivial torus knot, hyperbolic 2-bridge knot, or hyperbolic knot with unknotting number one contains infinitely many elements, none of which is the automorphic image of another, such that each normally generates the group.

As shown by Gluck in 1962, the diffeotopy group of S1×S2 is isomorphic to ℤ2⊕ℤ2 ⊕ℤ2. Here an alternative proof of this result is given, relying on contact topology. We then discuss two applications to contact topology: (i) it is shown that the fundamental group of the space of contact structures on S1×S2, based at the standard tight contact structure, is isomorphic to ℤ; (ii) inspired by previous work of Fraser, an example is given of an integer family of Legendrian knots in S1×S2#S1×S2 (with its standard tight contact structure) that can be distinguished with the help of contact surgery, but not by the classical invariants (topological knot type, Thurston–Bennequin invariant, and rotation number).

A link L in S3 possibly admits an involution of the exterior E(L) with fixed point set a closed surface, which is not extendable to an involution of S3. In this paper, we focus on the case of graph links and show that the genus of the surface provides a lower estimate of the number of link components.

For a fixed parabolic subalgebra 𝔭 of we prove that the centre of the principal block 𝒪0𝔭 of the parabolic category 𝒪 is naturally isomorphic to the cohomology ring H*(ℬ𝔭) of the corresponding Springer fibre. We give a diagrammatic description of 𝒪0𝔭 for maximal parabolic 𝔭 and give an explicit isomorphism to Braden’s description of the category PervB(G(k,n)) of Schubert-constructible perverse sheaves on Grassmannians. As a consequence Khovanov’s algebra ℋn is realised as the endomorphism ring of some object from PervB(G(n,n)) which corresponds under localisation and the Riemann–Hilbert correspondence to a full projective–injective module in the corresponding category 𝒪0𝔭. From there one can deduce that Khovanov’s tangle invariants are obtained from the more general functorial invariants in [C. Stroppel, Categorification of the Temperley Lieb category, tangles, and cobordisms via projective functors, Duke Math. J. 126(3) (2005), 547–596] by restriction.

We establish two-sided bounds for the complexity of two infinite series of closed orientable three-dimensional hyperbolic manifolds, the Löbell manifolds and the Fibonacci manifolds. The manifolds of the two series are indexed by an integer n and the corresponding complexity estimates are both linear in n.

In this paper, we prove that if K is any periodic link in S3 whose quotient link is a 2-bridge link, then one half of the degree of the reduced Alexander polynomial, the minimal genus, the free genus and the canonical genus of K are all the same. We also give criteria to determine whether a given periodic link has a 2-bridge link quotient and some properties of this kind of periodic link.

In this paper we give a re-normalization of the Reshetikhin–Turaev quantum invariants of links, using modified quantum dimensions. In the case of simple Lie algebras these modified quantum dimensions are proportional to the usual quantum dimensions. More interestingly, we give two examples where the usual quantum dimensions vanish but the modified quantum dimensions are non-zero and lead to non-trivial link invariants. The first of these examples is a class of invariants arising from Lie superalgebras previously defined by the first two authors. These link invariants are multivariable and generalize the multivariable Alexander polynomial. The second example is a hierarchy of link invariants arising from nilpotent representations of quantized at a root of unity. These invariants contain Kashaev’s quantum dilogarithm invariants of knots.

An enumeration result for orientably regular hypermaps of a given type with automorphism groups isomorphic to PSL(2,q) or PGL(2,q) can be extracted from a 1969 paper by Sah. We extend the investigation to orientable reflexible hypermaps and to nonorientable regular hypermaps, providing many more details about the associated computations and explicit generating sets for the associated groups.

We count how many ‘different’ Morse functions exist on the 2-sphere. There are several ways of declaring that two Morse functions f and g are ‘indistinguishable’ but we concentrate only on two natural equivalence relations: homological (when the regular sublevel sets f and g have identical Betti numbers) and geometric (when f is obtained from g via global, orientation-preserving changes of coordinates on S2 and ℝ). The count of homological classes is reduced to a count of lattice paths confined to the first quadrant. The count of geometric classes is reduced to a count of certain labeled trees, which is encoded by certain elliptic integrals.

We define an invariant of welded virtual knots from each finite crossed module by considering crossed module invariants of ribbon knotted surfaces which are naturally associated with them. We elucidate that the invariants obtained are non-trivial by calculating explicit examples. We define welded virtual graphs and consider invariants of them defined in a similar way.

We give a necessary condition for a two-bridge knot or link S(p,q) to be 2-adjacent to another two-bridge knot or link S(r,s). In particular, we show that if the trivial knot or link is 2-adjacent to S(p,q), then S(p,q) is trivial, that if S(p,q) is 2-adjacent to its mirror image, then S(p,q) is amphicheiral, and that for a prime integer p, if S(p,q) is 2-adjacent to S(r,s), then S(p,q)=S(r,s) or S(r,s)=S(1,0).