There are no Vassiliev invariants of degree one for classical knots. A. Henrich proved the existence of a sequence of three Vassiliev invariants of degree one for virtual knots. The invariants get stronger and stronger, and the final invariant is...
We begin with a result on the refocussing of null geodesics in space-times. We show that all oriented refocussing 2-dimensional Lorentz manifolds are also strongly refocussing. We also introduce a theory of virtual Legendrian knots. We show that...
Since its discovery in the 1930's, the Cherenkov effect has been paramount in the development of high-energy physics research. It results in light emission from charged particles traveling faster than the local speed of light in a dielectric...
For ordinary knots in R 3 , there are no degree one Vassiliev invariants. For virtual knots, however, the space of degree one Vassiliev invariants is infinite dimensional. We introduce a sequence of three degree one Vassiliev invariants of virtual...
This dissertation explores the spatial and temporal distributions of impurities in natural ice. Using polarized light, ion chromatography (IC), synchrotron x-ray topography (SXT), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive...
Goldman and Turaev constructed a Lie bialgebra structure on the free Z-module generated by free homotopy classes of loops on an oriented surface. Turaev conjectured that the cobracket of A is zero if and only if A is a power of a simple class. Chas...