Topology Atlas | Conferences


Knots in Washington XLV
December 8-10, 2017
George Washington University
Washington, DC, USA

Organizers
Valentina Harizanov (GWU), Jozef H. Przytycki (GWU), Yongwu Rong (GWU), Radmila Sazdanovic (NCSU), Alexander Shumakovitch (GWU), Hao Wu (GWU)

Conference Homepage


Complexity of Virtual Multistrings
by
David Freund
Dartmouth College

A virtual n-string α is a collection of n closed curves on an oriented surface M. Associated to α, there are two natural measures of complexity: the genus of M and the number of intersection points. By considering virtual n-strings up to equivalence by virtual homotopy, i.e., homotopies of the component curves and stabilizations/destabilizations of the surface, a natural question is whether these quantities can be minimized simultaneously. We show that this is possible for non-parallel virtual n-strings and that, moreover, such a representative can be obtained by monotonically decreasing genus and the number of intersections from any initial representative.

Date received: October 19, 2017


Copyright © 2017 by the author(s). The author(s) of this work and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Topology Atlas. Document # cboj-06.