Rectangle condition and its applications

Abstract

In this paper, we define the rectangle condition on the bridge sphere for a $n$-bridge decomposition of a knot whose definition is analogous to the definition of the rectangle condition for Heegaard splittings of $3$-manifolds. We show that the satisfaction of the rectangle condition for a $n$-bridge decomposition can guarantee that the Hempel distance for the $n$-bridge decomposition is greater than or equal to $2$. In particular, we give an interesting family of alternating 3-bridge knots by using the rectangle condition and a modified train track argument.