Some spaces of polynomial knots

Abstract

In this paper we study the topology of three different kinds of spaces associated to polynomial knots of degree at most $d$, for $d\geq2$. We denote these spaces by $\mathcal{O}_d$, $\mathcal{P}_d$ and $\mathcal{Q}_d$. For $d\geq3$, we show that the spaces $\mathcal{O}_d$ and $\mathcal{P}_d$ are path connected and the space $\mathcal{O}_d$ has the same homotopy type as $S^2$. Considering the space $\mathcal{P}=\bigcup_{d\geq2}\mathcal{O}_d$ of all polynomial knots with the inductive limit topology, we prove that it too has the same homotopy type as $S^2$. We also show that if two polynomial knots are path equivalent in $\mathcal{Q}_d$, then they are topologically equivalent. Furthermore, the number of path components in $\mathcal{Q}_d$ are in multiples of eight.