Complementary Regions of Knot and Link Diagrams

Abstract

An increasing sequence of integers is said to be universal for knots and links if every knot and link has a reduced projection on the sphere such that the number of edges of each complementary face of the projection comes from the given sequence. In this paper, it is proved that the following infinite sequences are each universal for knots and links: (3, 5, 7, . . .), (2, n, n + 1, n + 2, . . .) for each n ≥ 3, (3, n, n + 1, n + 2, . . .) for each n ≥ 4. Moreover, the finite sequences (2, 4, 5) and (3, 4, n) for each n ≥ 5 are universal for all knots and links. It is also shown that every knot has a projection with exactly two odd-sided faces, which can be taken to be triangles, and every link of n components has a projection with at most n odd-sided faces if n is even and n + 1 odd-sided faces if n is odd.