Colorings of symmetric unions and partial knots

Abstract

Motivated by work of Kinoshita and Teraska, Lamm introduced the notion of a symmetric union, which can be constructed from a partial knot $J$ by introducing additional crossings to a diagram of $J \# -\!J$ along its axis of symmetry. If both $J$ and $J'$ are partial knots for different symmetric union presentations of the same ribbon knot $K$, the knots $J$ and $J'$ are said to be symmetrically related. Lamm proved that if $J$ and $J'$ are symmetrically related, then $\det J = \det J'$, asking whether the converse is true. In this article, we give a negative answer to Lamm's question, constructing for any natural number $m$ a family of $2^m$ knots with the same determinant but such that no two knots in the family are symmetrically related. This result is a corollary to our main theorem, that if $J$ is the partial knot in a symmetric union presentation for $K$, then $\text{col}_p(J) \leq \text{col}_p(K) \leq \frac{(\text{col}_p(J))^2}{2}$, where $\text{col}_p(\cdot )$ denotes the number of $p$-colorings of a knot.