REIDEMEISTER MOVES FOR SURFACE ISOTOPIES AND THEIR INTERPRETATION AS MOVES TO MOVIES

Abstract

A movie description of a surface embedded in 4-space is a sequence of knot and link diagrams obtained from a projection of the surface to 3-space by taking 2-dimensional cross sections perpendicular to a fixed direction. In the cross sections, an immersed collection of curves appears, and these are lifted to knot diagrams by using the projection direction from 4-space. We give a set of 15 moves to movies (called movie moves) such that two movies represent isotopic surfaces if and only if there is a sequence of moves from this set that takes one to the other. This result generalizes the Roseman moves which are moves on projections where a height function has not been specified. The first 7 of the movie moves are height function parametrized versions of those given by Roseman. The remaining 8 are moves in which the topology of the projection remains unchanged.