Triangulations of the 3-sphere with knotted edge
We prove that for any knot K , there exists a decomposition of the 3-sphere into tetrahedra such that a representative of K is formed from one vertex and one edge of the decomposition. The proof is constructive, and based on fully augmented links. We use our method to produce a family of simplicial triangulations of the 3-sphere with a loop of four edges representing a t -fold connected sum of the trefoil, whose number of tetrahedra grows linearly in t . This is best possible up to a constant factor.
Authors
- Daniel V. Mathews (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3468-5039)
- Jonathan Spreer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6865-9483)
- Jessica S. Purcell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0618-2840)
- Dionne Ibarra (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2472-2089)
Institutions
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- Nanyang Technological University (SG)
- Monash University (AU)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A
- Published
- 2026-09-18
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcta.2026.106269
- Primary Topic
- Computational Geometry and Mesh Generation
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Australian Research Council