Arc crossing change is an unknotting operation

Abstract

This paper defines a new operation through extending the idea of the 0-dimensional crossing change and Shimizu’s 2-dimensional region crossing change [A. Shimizu, Region crossing change is an unknotting operation, J. Math. Soc. Jpn. 66(3) (2014) 693–708, doi:10.2969/jmsj/06630693] to a 1-dimensional version called the arc crossing change. We will also prove that the arc crossing change is an unknotting operation with the help of Gauss diagrams.