Alternating knots with unknotting number one

Abstract

We prove that if an alternating knot has unknotting number one, then there exists an unknotting crossing in any alternating diagram. This is done by showing that the obstruction to unknotting number one developed by Greene in his work on alternating 3-braid knots is sufficient to identify all unknotting number one alternating knots. As a consequence, we also get a converse to the Montesinos trick: an alternating knot has unknotting number one if its branched double cover arises as half-integer surgery on a knot in $S^3$. We also reprove a characterisation of almost-alternating diagrams of the unknot originally due to Tsukamoto.Comment: 38 pages, 15 figures. This a significant revision of the first version. A proof of Tsukamoto's work on almost-alternating diagrams of the unknot is now included. There is also an additional formulation of the main theorem which makes precise the signs of the unknotting crossings and the resulting half-integer surgeries. Some comments on potential further questions have also been adde