|
In the mathematical field of knot theory, Fox ''n''-coloring is a method of specifying a representation of a knot group (or a link group) onto the dihedral group of order ''n'' where ''n'' is an odd integer by coloring arcs in a link diagram (the representation itself is also often called a Fox ''n''-coloring). Ralph Fox discovered this method (and the special case of tricolorability) "in an effort to make the subject accessible to everyone" when he was explaining knot theory to undergraduate students at Haverford College in 1956. Fox ''n''-coloring is an example of a conjugation quandle. ==Definition== Let ''L'' be a link, and let ''π'' be the fundamental group of its complement. A representation of ''π'' onto the dihedral group of order ''2n'' is called a Fox ''n''-coloring (or simply an ''n''-coloring) of ''L''. A link ''L'' which admits such a representation is said to be ''n''-colorable, and is called an ''n''-coloring of ''L''. Such representations of link groups had been considered in the context of covering spaces since Reidemeister in 1929. The link group is generated paths from a basepoint in to the boundary of a tubular neighbourhood of the link, around a meridian of the tubular neighbourhood, and back to the basepoint. By surjectivity of the representation these generators must map to reflections of a regular ''n''-gon. Such reflections correspond to elements of the dihedral group, where ''t'' is a reflection and ''s'' is a generating () rotation of the ''n''-gon. The generators of the link group given above are in bijective correspondence with arcs of a link diagram, and if a generator maps to we color the corresponding arc . This is called a Fox ''n''-coloring of the link diagram, and it satisfies the following properties: *At least two colors are used (by surjectivity of ). *Around a crossing, the average of the colors of the undercrossing arcs equals the color of the overcrossing arc (because is a representation of the link group). A ''n''-colored link yields a 3-manifold ''M'' by taking the (irregular) dihedral covering of the 3-sphere branched over ''L'' with monodromy given by . By a theorem of Montesinos and Hilden, and closed oriented 3-manifold may be obtained this way for some knot ''K'' any some tricoloring of ''K''. This is no longer true when ''n'' is greater than three. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fox n-coloring」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|