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Prime Link


A prime link is a link that cannot be represented as a knot sum of other links. Doll and Hoste (1991) list polynomials for oriented links of nine or fewer crossings, and Rolfsen (1976) gives a table of links with small numbers of components and crossings.

The following table summarizes the number of distinct prime k-components links having specified crossing numbers. The

componentsOEISprime n-component links with 1, 2, ... crossings
1A0028630, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 7, 21, 49, 165, 552, ...
2A0489520, 1, 0, 1, 1, 3, 8, 16, 61, 185, 638, ...
3A0489530, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1, 10, 21, 74, 329, ...
4A0870710, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1, 15, 39, ...
50, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1, ...
totalA0867710, 1, 1, 2, 3, 9, 16, 50, 132, 442, 1559, ...

The following table lists some named links. The notation and ordering follows that of Rolfsen (1976), where c_k^r denotes the kth r-component link with crossing number c.

A listing of the first few simple links follows, arranged by link crossing number.

01

01

01

01

01 02 03

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

01 02 03

01

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

01 02 03

01


See also

Andrews-Curtis Link, Borromean Rings, Brunnian Link, Hopf Link, Knot, Link, Oriented Link, Prime Knot, Unlink, Whitehead Link

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References

Bar-Natan, D. "The Hoste-Thistlethwaite Link Table." http://www.math.toronto.edu/~drorbn/KAtlas/Links/.Doll, H. and Hoste, J. "A Tabulation of Oriented Links." Math. Comput. 57, 747-761, 1991.Rolfsen, D. Knots and Links. Wilmington, DE: Publish or Perish Press, 1976.Scharein, R. G. "Number of Prime Links." http://www.pims.math.ca/knotplot/manual/PrimeLinks.html.Sloane, N. J. A. Sequences A002863/M0851, A048952, A048953, A086771, and A087071 in "The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences."Welsh, D. J. A. "On the Number of Knots and Links." Colloq. Math. Soc. J. Bolyai 60, 713-718, 1991.

Referenced on Wolfram|Alpha

Prime Link

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Prime Link." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeLink.html

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