Tait's Flyping Conjecture for 4-Regular Graphs

Abstract

Tait's flyping conjecture, stating that two reduced, alternating, prime link diagrams can be connected by a finite sequence of flypes, is extended to reduced, alternating, prime diagrams of 4-regular graphs in S^3. The proof of this version of the flyping conjecture is based on the fact that the equivalence classes with respect to ambient isotopy and rigid vertex isotopy of graph embeddings are identical on the class of diagrams considered.

20 pages, 13 figures, latex2e, metafont; main theorem generalized (without condition "vertex-separating"), to appear in JCTB