Building Gordian links

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Wöden Kusner (None / Other)
• Tuesday 22 August 2023, 16:30-17:00
• External.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact nobody.

PMVW01 - 5th International Conference on Packing Problems: Packing and patterns in granular mechanics

Given a sufficiently nice embedded space curve, we can thicken it into a physical “rope”. A pair of physical configurations might be called “Gordian” if there is no physical isotopy that takes one to the other. It is an (old) open problem to describe a Gordian Unknot: a physical trivial knot that cannot be unknotted.We will examine some features of configurations of physical links and a notion of “extrusion”. This is different from the topological sweep-out perspective that Coward and Hass used to first describe a Gordian split link. Some advantages appear with our shifted view; we trade a general statement about knots and surfaces for packing density bounds and rigidity/transversality statements, severely constraining the character of certain physical isotopies.Related to work with Rob Kusner, Greg Buck.

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All CMS events
• External
• Featured lists
• INI info aggregator
• Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series
• School of Physical Sciences
• bld31

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.