A geometric characterization of the upper bound for the span of the Jones polynomial

Let D be a link diagram with n crossings, sA and sB its extreme states and |sAD| (resp. |sBD|) the number of simple closed curves that appear when smoothing D according to sA (resp. sB). We give a general formula for the sum |sAD| + |sBD| for a k-almost alternating diagram D, for any k, characterizi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: González-Meneses López, Juan, González Manchón, Pedro María
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión enviada para evaluación y publicación
Fecha de publicación:2011
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/42282
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/11441/42282
https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218216511009005
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:K-almost alternating diagram
Circle number
Surgery
Dealternator connected diagram
Dealternator reduced diagram
Jones polynomial
Span
Descripción
Sumario:Let D be a link diagram with n crossings, sA and sB its extreme states and |sAD| (resp. |sBD|) the number of simple closed curves that appear when smoothing D according to sA (resp. sB). We give a general formula for the sum |sAD| + |sBD| for a k-almost alternating diagram D, for any k, characterizing this sum as the number of faces in an appropriate triangulation of an appropriate surface with boundary. When D is dealternator connected, the triangulation is especially simple, yielding |sAD| + |sBD| = n + 2 − 2k. This gives a simple geometric proof of the upper bound of the span of the Jones polynomial for dealternator connected diagrams, a result first obtained by Zhu. Another upper bound of the span of the Jones polynomial for dealternator connected and dealternator reduced diagrams, discovered historically first by Adams et al, is obtained as a corollary. As a new application, we prove that the Turaev genus is equal to the number k of dealternator crossings for any dealternator connected diagram.