Rigidity of highly twisted plat diagrams

Abstract

In this paper we prove that if a knot or link has a sufficiently complicated plat projection, then that plat projection is unique. More precisely, if a knot or link has a $2m$-plat projection, where $m$ is at least four, and height at least two, and each twist region of the plat contains at least four crossings, then such a projection is unique up to obvious rotations. In particular, this projection gives a canonical form for such knots and links, and thus provides a classification of these links.