Developing a Mathematical Model for Bobbin Lace

Bobbin lace is a fibre art form in which intricate and delicate patterns are created by braiding together many threads. An overview of how bobbin lace is made is presented and illustrated with a simple, traditional bookmark design. Research on the topology of textiles and braid theory form a base for the current work and is briefly summarized. We define a new mathematical model that supports the enumeration and generation of bobbin lace patterns using an intelligent combinatorial search. Results of this new approach are presented and, by comparison to existing bobbin lace patterns, it is demonstrated that this model reveals new patterns that have never been seen before. Finally, we apply our new patterns to an original bookmark design and propose future areas for exploration.Comment: 20 pages, 18 figures, intended audience includes Artists as well as Computer Scientists and Mathematician

A computational approach to Conway's thrackle conjecture

A drawing of a graph in the plane is called a thrackle if every pair of edges meets precisely once, either at a common vertex or at a proper crossing. Let t(n) denote the maximum number of edges that a thrackle of n vertices can have. According to a 40 years old conjecture of Conway, t(n)=n for every n>2. For any eps>0, we give an algorithm terminating in e^{O((1/eps^2)ln(1/eps))} steps to decide whether t(n)2. Using this approach, we improve the best known upper bound, t(n)<=3/2(n-1), due to Cairns and Nikolayevsky, to 167/117n<1.428n.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Boundary operator algebras for free uniform tree lattices

Let $X$ be a finite connected graph, each of whose vertices has degree at least three. The fundamental group $\Gamma$ of $X$ is a free group and acts on the universal covering tree $\Delta$ and on its boundary $\partial \Delta$, endowed with a natural topology and Borel measure. The crossed product $C^*$-algebra $C(\partial \Delta) \rtimes \Gamma$ depends only on the rank of $\Gamma$ and is a Cuntz-Krieger algebra whose structure is explicitly determined. The crossed product von Neumann algebra does not possess this rigidity. If $X$ is homogeneous of degree $q+1$ then the von Neumann algebra $L^\infty(\partial \Delta)\rtimes \Gamma$ is the hyperfinite factor of type $III_\lambda$ where $\lambda=1/{q^2}$ if $X$ is bipartite, and $\lambda=1/{q}$ otherwise

Short-range and long-range order: a transition in block-gluing behavior in Hom shifts

Hom shifts form a class of multidimensional shifts of finite type (SFT) and consist of colorings of the grid Z2 where adjacent colours must be neighbors in a fixed finite undirected simple graph G. This class includes several important statistical physics models such as the hard square model. The gluing gap measures how far any two square patterns of size n can be glued, which can be seen as a measure of the range of order, and affects the possibility to compute the entropy (or free energy per site) of a shift. This motivates a study of the possible behaviors of the gluing gap. The class of Hom shifts has the interest that mixing type properties can be formulated in terms of algebraic graph theory, which has received a lot of attention recently. Improving some former work of N. Chandgotia and B. Marcus, we prove that the gluing gap either depends linearly on n or is dominated by log(n). We also find a Hom shift with gap {\Theta}(log(n)), infirming a conjecture formulated by R. Pavlov and M. Schraudner. The physical interest of these results is to better understand the transition from short-range to long-range order (respectively sublogarithmic and linear gluing gap), which is reflected in whether some parameter, the square cover, is finite or infinite