A New Way to Compute the Thurston-Bennequin Number

Abstract

We establish a relation between several easy-to-calculate numerical invariants of generic knots in ${\mathbb{H}}^2\times S^1$, and use it to give a new method of computing the Thurston-Bennequin number of Legendrian knots in the tight contact ${\mathbb{R}}^3$.

7 pages, 3 figures