On the Minimum Ropelength of Knots and Links

The ropelength of a knot is the quotient of its length and its thickness, the radius of the largest embedded normal tube around the knot. We prove existence and regularity for ropelength minimizers in any knot or link type; these are $C^{1,1}$ curves, but need not be smoother. We improve the lower bound for the ropelength of a nontrivial knot, and establish new ropelength bounds for small knots and links, including some which are sharp.Comment: 29 pages, 14 figures; New version has minor additions and corrections; new section on asymptotic growth of ropelength; several new reference

On the Geometric Ramsey Number of Outerplanar Graphs

We prove polynomial upper bounds of geometric Ramsey numbers of pathwidth-2 outerplanar triangulations in both convex and general cases. We also prove that the geometric Ramsey numbers of the ladder graph on $2n$ vertices are bounded by $O(n^{3})$ and $O(n^{10})$, in the convex and general case, respectively. We then apply similar methods to prove an $n^{O(\log(n))}$ upper bound on the Ramsey number of a path with $n$ ordered vertices.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

On comparing the writhe of a smooth curve to the writhe of an inscribed polygon

We find bounds on the difference between the writhing number of a smooth curve, and the writhing number of a polygon inscribed within. The proof is based on an extension of Fuller's difference of writhe formula to the case of polygonal curves. The results establish error bounds useful in the computation of writhe.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure