DT (Dowker-Thistlethwaite) Codes

KnotTheory`/Navigation  The Mathematica Package KnotTheory` Acknowledgement Setup Naming and Enumeration Presentations Planar Diagrams Some further details Gauss Codes DT (Dowker-Thistlethwaite) Codes Braid Representatives MorseLink Presentations Arc Presentations Conway Notation Graphical Input Graphical Output Drawing Planar Diagrams How does it work? Drawing MorseLink Presentations Drawing Braids Structure and Operations Invariants Invariants from Braid Theory Three Dimensional Invariants The Alexander-Conway Polynomial The Multivariable Alexander Polynomial The Determinant and the Signature The Jones Polynomial How is the Jones polynomial computed? The Coloured Jones Polynomials The A2 Invariant Quantum knot invariants The HOMFLY-PT Polynomial The Kauffman Polynomial Finite Type (Vassiliev) Invariants Khovanov Homology Heegaard Floer Knot Homology R-Matrix Invariants Extras Included with KnotTheory` Drawing with TubePlot Standalone_TubePlot Using the LinKnot package WikiLink QuantumGroups` Lightly Documented Features A Sample KnotTheory` Session Further Usage Example Prime Links with a Non-Prime Component "Rubberband" Brunnian Links Identifying Knots within a List Cabling Burau's Theorem Further Knot Theory Software KnotPlot Knotscape Xknots Extending/Modifying KnotTheory` Bugs How to Edit this Manual...

Knots

The "DT Code" ("DT" after Clifford Hugh Dowker and Morwen Thistlethwaite) of a knot $K$ is obtained as follows:

• Start "walking" along $K$ and count every crossing you pass through. If $K$ has $n$ crossings and given that every crossing is visited twice, the count ends at $2n$. Label each crossing with the values of the counter when it is visited, though when labeling by an even number, take it with a minus sign if you are walking "under" the crossing.
• Every crossing is now labeled with two integers whose absolute values run from $1$ to $2n$. It is easy to see that each crossing is labeled with one odd integer and one even integer. The DT code of $K$ is the list of even integers paired with the odd integers 1, 3, 5, ..., taken in this order. Thus for example the pairing for the knot in the figure below is $((1,8),(3,10),(5,2),(7,12),(9,4),(11,6))$, and hence its DT code is $(8,10,2,12,4,6)$.

The DT notation

KnotTheory` has some rudimentary support for DT codes:

(For In[1] see Setup)

In[1]:= ?DTCode DTCode[i1, i2, ...] represents a knot via its DT (Dowker-Thistlethwaite) code. DTCode also acts as a "type caster", so for example, DTCode[K] where K is is a named knot returns the DT code of that knot.

Thus for example, the DT codes for the last 9 crossing alternating knot 9_41 and the first 9 crossing non alternating knot 9_42 are:

In[2]:=	dts = DTCode /@ {Knot[9, 41], Knot[9, 42]}
Out[2]=	{DTCode[6, 10, 14, 12, 16, 2, 18, 4, 8], DTCode[4, 8, 10, -14, 2, -16, -18, -6, -12]}

(The DT code of an alternating knot is always a sequence of positive numbers but the DT code of a non alternating knot contains both signs.)

9_41

9_42

DT codes and Gauss codes carry the same information and are easily convertible:

In[3]:=	gcs = GaussCode /@ dts
Out[3]=	{GaussCode[1, -6, 2, -8, 3, -1, 4, -9, 5, -2, 6, -4, 7, -3, 8, -5, 9, -7], GaussCode[1, -5, 2, -1, 3, 8, -4, -2, 5, -3, -6, 9, -7, 4, -8, 6, -9, 7]}

In[4]:=	DTCode /@ gcs
Out[4]=	{DTCode[6, 10, 14, 12, 16, 2, 18, 4, 8], DTCode[4, 8, 10, -14, 2, -16, -18, -6, -12]}

Conversion between DT codes and/or Gauss codes and PD codes is more complicated; the harder side, going from DT/Gauss to PD, was written by Siddarth Sankaran at the University of Toronto:

In[5]:=	PD[DTCode[4, 6, 2]]
Out[5]=	PD[X[4, 2, 5, 1], X[6, 4, 1, 3], X[2, 6, 3, 5]]

Links

DT Codes for links are defined in a similar way (see [DollHoste]). Follow the same numbering process as for knots, except when you finish traversing one component, jump straight to the next. It is not difficult to see that there is always a choice of starting points along the components for which the resulting pairing is a pairing between odd and even numbers. Again, it is enough to only list the even numbers corresponding to $1,3,5,\ldots$.

[DollHoste] ^  H. Doll and J. Hoste, A tabulation of oriented links, Mathematics of Computation 57-196 (1991) 747-761.