Applications of band surgery on knots and links

Abstract: We consider local moves of knots and links, called band surgeries. A band surgery usually changes the topology of knots and links. Signatures, Jones polynomials, and other link invariants can be used to show the absence of band surgery between a given pair of links. A band surgery has been used for establishing mathematical models of DNA recombination and anti-parallel reconnection of vortex knots and links. In this talk, we discuss applications of results of band surgeries to the unlinking of DNA links by site-specific recombination and to the untying of vortex knots by anti-parallel reconnection.

geometric topology

Audience: researchers in the topic

GEOTOP-A seminar

Series comments: Web-seminar series on Applications of Geometry and Topology