BFACF-style algorithms for polygons in the body-centered and face-centered cubic lattices

Abstract

In this paper the elementary moves of the BFACF-algorithm for lattice polygons are generalised to elementary moves of BFACF-style algorithms for lattice polygons in the body-centred (BCC) and face-centred (FCC) cubic lattices. We prove that the ergodicity classes of these new elementary moves coincide with the knot types of unrooted polygons in the BCC and FCC lattices and so expand a similar result for the cubic lattice. Implementations of these algorithms for knotted polygons using the GAS algorithm produce estimates of the minimal length of knotted polygons in the BCC and FCC lattices.