Menasco Normal Form and Recognizing Unknot Diagrams
Chan-Ho Suh · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2007
We give a diagrammatic variant of Haken’s normal surface theory, which relies only on a knot diagram and not on additional structures such as a triangulation. The variables are normal arcs rather than normal discs. The crucial ingredient is Menasco’s crossing bubble technique. We demonstrate an unknot recognition algorithm utilizing these techniques.