The existence of a transverse universal knot

We prove that there is a knot $K$ transverse to $\xi_{std}$, the tight contact structure of $S^3$, such that every contact 3-manifold $(M, \xi)$ can be obtained as a contact covering branched along $K$. By contact covering we mean a map $\varphi: M \to S^3$ branched along $K$ such that $\xi$ is contact isotopic to the lifting of $\xi_{std}$ under $\varphi$.Comment: 36 pages, 22 figure

A bound on the number of twice-punctured tori in a knot exterior

This paper continues a program due to Motegi regarding universal bounds for the number of non-isotopic essential $n$-punctured tori in the complement of a hyperbolic knot in $S^3$. For $n=1$, Valdez-S\'anchez showed that there are at most five non-isotopic Seifert tori in the exterior of a hyperbolic knot. In this paper, we address the case $n=2$. We show that there are at most six non-isotopic, nested, essential 2-holed tori in the complement of every hyperbolic knot.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

Some applications of TDA on financial markets

The Topological Data Analysis (TDA) has had many applications. However, financial markets has been studied slightly through TDA. Here we present a quick review of some recent applications of TDA on financial markets and propose a new turbulence index based on persistent homology -- the fundamental tool for TDA -- that seems to capture critical transitions on financial data, based on our experiment with SP500 data before 2020 stock market crash in February 20, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We review applications in the early detection of turbulence periods in financial markets and how TDA can help to get new insights while investing and obtain superior risk-adjusted returns compared with investing strategies using classical turbulence indices as VIX and the Chow's index based on the Mahalanobis distance. Furthermore, we include an introduction to persistent homology so the reader could be able to understand this paper without knowing TDA