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Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School

Alexander polynomial

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Full-Text Articles in Mathematics

The Alexander Polynominal For Virtual Twist Knots, Isaac Benioff, Blake Mellor Jan 2017

The Alexander Polynominal For Virtual Twist Knots, Isaac Benioff, Blake Mellor

Mathematics Faculty Works

We define a family of virtual knots generalizing the classical twist knots. We develop a recursive formula for the Alexander polynomial Δ0 (as defined by Silver and Williams [Polynomial invariants of virtual links, J. Knot Theory Ramifications12 (2003) 987–1000]) of these virtual twist knots. These results are applied to provide evidence for a conjecture that the odd writhe of a virtual knot can be obtained from Δ0 .


Colorings, Determinants And Alexander Polynomials For Spatial Graphs, Terry Kong, Alec Lewald, Blake Mellor, Vadim Pigrish Jan 2016

Colorings, Determinants And Alexander Polynomials For Spatial Graphs, Terry Kong, Alec Lewald, Blake Mellor, Vadim Pigrish

Mathematics Faculty Works

A {\em balanced} spatial graph has an integer weight on each edge, so that the directed sum of the weights at each vertex is zero. We describe the Alexander module and polynomial for balanced spatial graphs (originally due to Kinoshita \cite{ki}), and examine their behavior under some common operations on the graph. We use the Alexander module to define the determinant and p-colorings of a balanced spatial graph, and provide examples. We show that the determinant of a spatial graph determines for which p the graph is p-colorable, and that a p-coloring of a graph corresponds to a representation of …