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Reference request for conjecture about bridge and crossing number of knots

Mathematics Asked by R. Suwalski on November 2, 2021

Murasugi in his book (Knot theory and its applications, page 60) writes:

Conjecture. If $K$ is a knot, then $c(K) ge 3(br(K) – 1)$, where equality only holds when $K$ is the trivial knot, the trefoil knot, or
the (connected) sum of trefoil knots.

I would like to know who came up first with this conjecture, if there was any progress on it in recent years and if it has some special name. Murasugi’s book is quite tacit here.

One Answer

This is only a partial answer, but perhaps it can point you in the correct direction.

In the paper An estimate of the bridge index of links, Murasugi conjectures that $$3[b(L)−1]leq c(L)+mu−1$$ where $b(L)$ is the braid bridge index of $L$, $c(L)$ is the crossing number of $L$, and $mu$ is the number of components of $L$. In that same paper, he proves the conjecture alternating algebraic links.

I do not have access to the paper, but the MathSciNet review mentions that the conjecture above is due to Fox when $mu=1$, that is, when $L$ is a knot. The full bibliographic details for the paper are

  • Murasugi, Kunio. An estimate of the bridge index of links. Kobe J. Math. 5 (1988), no. 1, 75–86.

Answered by Adam Lowrance on November 2, 2021

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