Physical And Numerical Models In Knot Theory: Including Applications To The Life Sciences

The physical properties of knotted and linked configurations in space have been of interest to physicists and mathematicians for a long time. More recently and more widely, they have become interesting to biological and computer scientists, and to engineers among others. The depth of importance and breadth of application are now widely appreciated. In this volume, there are several contributions from researchers who are using computers to study problems that would otherwise be untractable. While computations have long been used to analyze problems, formulate conjectures, and search for special structures in knot theory, increased computational power has made them a staple in many facets of the field. From properties of knot invariants, to knot tabulation, studies of hyperbolic structures, knot energies, and to the exploration of spaces of knots, computers have opened the doors to problems that would have otherwise been too difficult to do by hand computation. There are also contributions concentrating on models that researchers use to understand knotting, linking, and entanglement in physical and biological systems. Topics range from knotted umbilical cords, to studies of DNA knots and knots in proteins.