The tightest knot is not necessarily the smallest

Abstract

In this paper, we attempt to find counterexamples to the conjecture that the ideal form of a knot, that which minimizes its contour length while respecting a no-overlap constraint, also minimizes the volume of the knot, as determined by its convex hull. We measure the convex hull volume of knots during the length annealing process, identifying local minima in the hull volume that arise due to buckling and symmetry breaking. We use [Formula: see text] torus knots as an illustrative example of a family of knots whose locally minimal-length embeddings are not necessarily ordered by volume. We identify several knots whose central curve has a convex hull volume that is not minimized in the ideal configuration, and find that [Formula: see text] has a non-ideal global minimum in its convex hull volume even when the thickness of its tube is taken into account.