Circuit presentation and lattice stick number with exactly four z-sticks

Abstract

The lattice stick number [Formula: see text] of a link [Formula: see text] is defined to be the minimal number of straight line segments required to construct a stick presentation of [Formula: see text] in the cubic lattice. Hong, No and Oh [Upper bound on lattice stick number of knots, Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 155 (2013) 173–179] found a general upper bound [Formula: see text]. A rational link can be represented by a lattice presentation with exactly 4 [Formula: see text]-sticks. An [Formula: see text]-circuit is the disjoint union of [Formula: see text] arcs in the lattice plane [Formula: see text]. An [Formula: see text]-circuit presentation is an embedding obtained from the [Formula: see text]-circuit by connecting each [Formula: see text] pair of vertices with one line segment above the circuit. By using a two-circuit presentation, we can easily find the lattice presentation with exactly four [Formula: see text]-sticks. In this paper, we show that an upper bound for the lattice stick number of rational [Formula: see text]-links realized with exactly four [Formula: see text]-sticks is [Formula: see text]. Furthermore, it is [Formula: see text] if [Formula: see text] is a two-component link.