Entanglement complexity of spanning pairs of lattice polygons

Abstract

We study the entanglement complexity of a system consisting of two simple-closed curves (self-avoiding polygons) that span a lattice tube, referred to as a 2SAP. 2SAPs are of interest as the first known model of confined ring polymers where the linking probability goes to 1 exponentially with the size of the system. Atapour et al proved this in 2010 by showing that all but exponentially few sufficiently large 2SAPs contain a pattern that guarantees the 2SAP is non-split, provided that the requisite pattern fits in the tube. This result was recently extended to all tubes sizes that admit non-trivial links. Here we develop and apply knot theory results to answer more general questions about the entanglement complexity of 2SAPs. We first extend the 1992 concept of a good measure of knot complexity to a good measure, $F$, of spanning-link complexity for $k$-component links. Using tangle products, we show, for example, that the more complex the prime knot decomposition of any component of a given link type, the greater its $F$-measure. We then prove that all but exponentially few size $m$ 2SAPs have $F$ complexity that grows at least linearly in $m$ as $m\to \infty$. We establish that good measures of knot complexity yield good measures of spanning-link complexity. We also establish conditions whereby more general link invariants can yield good measures. In particular, we establish that measures based on several classical invariants are good measures by our definition, eg bridge number or the splitting number. Finally, we consider how the tube dimensions affect which links are embeddable as 2SAPs as well as geometric restrictions on the entanglement complexity of the embeddings. For example, we establish that there are two-component links that occur as 2SAPs in a given tube size only when one of the components is forced into a non-minimal bridge number conformation.