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Concept
Hopf link
Summary
In mathematical knot theory, the Hopf link is the simplest nontrivial link with more than one component. It consists of two circles linked together exactly once, and is named after Heinz Hopf.
A concrete model consists of two unit circles in perpendicular planes, each passing through the center of the other. This model minimizes the ropelength of the link and until 2002 the Hopf link was the only link whose ropelength was known. The convex hull of these two circles forms a shape called an oloid.
Depending on the relative orientations of the two components the linking number of the Hopf link is ±1.
The Hopf link is a (2,2)-torus link with the braid word
The knot complement of the Hopf link is R × S1 × S1, the cylinder over a torus. This space has a locally Euclidean geometry, so the Hopf link is not a hyperbolic link. The knot group of the Hopf link (the fundamental group of its complement) is Z2 (the free abelian group on two generators), distinguishing it from an unlinked pair of loops which has the free group on two generators as its group.
The Hopf-link is not tricolorable: it is not possible to color the strands of its diagram with three colors, so that at least two of the colors are used and so that every crossing has one or three colors present. Each link has only one strand, and if both strands are given the same color then only one color is used, while if they are given different colors then the crossings will have two colors present.
The Hopf fibration is a continuous function from the 3-sphere (a three-dimensional surface in four-dimensional Euclidean space) into the more familiar 2-sphere, with the property that the inverse image of each point on the 2-sphere is a circle. Thus, these images decompose the 3-sphere into a continuous family of circles, and
each two distinct circles form a Hopf link. This was Hopf's motivation for studying the Hopf link: because each two fibers are linked, the Hopf fibration is a nontrivial fibration. This example began the study of homotopy groups of spheres.
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Link (knot theory)
In mathematical knot theory, a link is a collection of knots which do not intersect, but which may be linked (or knotted) together. A knot can be described as a link with one component. Links and knots are studied in a branch of mathematics called knot theory. Implicit in this definition is that there is a trivial reference link, usually called the unlink, but the word is also sometimes used in context where there is no notion of a trivial link.
Link group
In knot theory, an area of mathematics, the link group of a link is an analog of the knot group of a knot. They were described by John Milnor in his Ph.D. thesis, . Notably, the link group is not in general the fundamental group of the link complement. The link group of an n-component link is essentially the set of (n + 1)-component links extending this link, up to link homotopy. In other words, each component of the extended link is allowed to move through regular homotopy (homotopy through immersions), knotting or unknotting itself, but is not allowed to move through other components.
Brunnian link
In knot theory, a branch of topology, a Brunnian link is a nontrivial link that becomes a set of trivial unlinked circles if any one component is removed. In other words, cutting any loop frees all the other loops (so that no two loops can be directly linked). The name Brunnian is after Hermann Brunn. Brunn's 1892 article Über Verkettung included examples of such links. The best-known and simplest possible Brunnian link is the Borromean rings, a link of three unknots.