Skip to main content
Unpublished Paper
The Second Hull of a Knotted Curve
American Journal of Mathematics (2003)
  • Jason Cantarella
  • Greg Kuperberg
  • Robert B. Kusner, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  • John M. Sullivan
Abstract

The convex hull of a set K in space consists of points which are, in a certain sense, "surrounded" by K. When K is a closed curve, we define its higher hulls, consisting of points which are "multiply surrounded" by the curve. Our main theorem shows that if a curve is knotted then it has a nonempty second hull. This provides a new proof of the Fary/Milnor theorem that every knotted curve has total curvature at least 4pi.

Publication Date
December, 2003
Comments
Pre-published version downloaded from archive ArXiv.org. This article appeared in the American Journal of Mathematics, Volume 125, Issue 6, 2003, pages 1335-1348, Copyright © 2003, Johns Hopkins University Press.
Citation Information
Jason Cantarella, Greg Kuperberg, Robert B. Kusner and John M. Sullivan. "The Second Hull of a Knotted Curve" American Journal of Mathematics (2003)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/robert_kusner/11/