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.

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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

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article

Triangulations of the 3-sphere with knotted edge

Daniel V. Mathews, Jonathan Spreer, Jessica S. Purcell, Dionne Ibarra
Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A
Computational Geometry and Mesh Generation
article

Triangulations of the 3-sphere with knotted edge

Daniel V. Mathews, Jonathan Spreer, Jessica S. Purcell, Dionne Ibarra
article en

Abstract

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.

Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series AVol. 226
The University of Sydney (AU), Nanyang Technological University (SG), Monash University (AU)
Australian Research Council
Openalex Percentile: Top 98%
Computational Geometry and Mesh Generation
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