Almost positive links are strongly quasipositive

preprint2021arXivOpen access

Abstract

We prove that any link admitting a diagram with a single negative crossing is strongly quasipositive. This answers a question of Stoimenow's in the (strong) positive. As a second main result, we give simple and complete characterizations of link diagrams with quasipositive canonical surface (the surface produced by Seifert's algorithm). As applications, we determine which prime knots up to 13 crossings are strongly quasipositive, and we confirm the following conjecture for knots that have a canonical surface realizing their genus: a knot is strongly quasipositive if and only if the Bennequin inequality is an equality.

Explore this paper’s authors, topics and related work.

Building this map preview

BZPEER is loading the nearby papers, people, topics and institutions for this page.

Reviews 0

Write a reviewWrite

No reviews yet.

Discussion 0

Add a commentWrite

No comments yet.