Hard Diagrams of the Unknot

We present three hard diagrams of the unknot. They require (at least) three extra crossings before they can be simplified to the trivial unknot diagram via Reidemeister moves in S2. Both examples are constructed by applying previously proposed methods. The proof of their hardness uses significant computational resources. We also determine that no small standard example of a hard unknot diagram requires more than one extra crossing for Reidemeister moves in S2.

keywords: Computational Geometry, Graph Drawing, Graphs Theory

Archived Publication (not reviewed)

Arnaud de Mesmay, Benjamin A. Burton, Clément Maria, Eric Sedgwick, Hsien-Chih Chang, Jonathan Spreer, Maarten Löffler, Saul Schleimer
Hard Diagrams of the Unknot
2104.14076, 2021
http://arXiv.org/abs/2104.14076

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