Pseudo knots and an obstruction to cosmetic crossings

Abstract

Pseudo links have two crossing types: classical crossings and indeterminate crossings. They were first introduced by Ryo Hanaki as a possible tool for analyzing images produced by electron microscopy of DNA. A normalized bracket polynomial is defined for pseudo links and then used to construct and obstruction to cosmetic crossings in classical links.

arXiv comment7 pages, 4 figures