Alexander invariants of periodic virtual knots
arXiv:1706.02671 · doi:10.4064/dm785-3-2018
Abstract
We show that every periodic virtual knot can be realized as the closure of a periodic virtual braid and use this to study the Alexander invariants of periodic virtual knots. If is a -periodic and almost classical knot, we show that its quotient knot is also almost classical, and in the case is a prime power, we establish an analogue of Murasugi's congruence relating the Alexander polynomials of and over the integers modulo . This result is applied to the problem of determining the possible periods of a virtual knot . One consequence is that if is an almost classical knot with a nontrivial Alexander polynomial, then it is -periodic for only finitely many primes . Combined with parity and Manturov projection, our methods provide conditions that a general virtual knot must satisfy in order to be -periodic.
55 pages, 18 figures, 3 tables