1 CHAPTER I IDEAL KNOTS AND THEIR RELATION TO THE PHYSICS OF REAL KNOTS ANDRZEJ STASIAK, JACQUES DUBOCHET Laboratoire d'Analyse Ultrastructurale Universite de Lausanne 1015 Lausanne-Dorigny, Switzerland. e-mail:
[email protected] Jacques. Dubochet@lau. unil. ch VSEVOLOD KATRITCH Department of Chemistry Rutgers the State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903, USA. e-mail:
[email protected] PIOTR PIERANSKI Department of Physics Poznan University of Technology Piotrowo 3, 60 965 Poznan, Poland and Institute of Molecular Physics, Smoluchowskiego 17, 60 159 Poznan e-mail:
[email protected] by 193.61.34.119 on 10/05/17. For personal use only. Ideal Knots Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com We present here the concept of ideal geometric representations of knots which are defined as minimal length trajectories of uniform diameter tubes forming a given type of knot. We show that ideal geometric representations of knots show interesting relations between each other and allow us to predict certain average properties of randomly distorted knotted polymers. Some relations between the behaviour of real physical knots and idealised representations of knots which minimise or maximise certain properties were previously observed and discussed in Ref. 1-5. 2 1 Ideal knots We learnt at school that the circle is the ideal planar geometric figure, since, amongst planar objects, it has the highest area to circumference ratio. Similarly the sphere is the ideal solid, since it has the highest volume to surface area ratio. The concept of ideal geometric objects was developed in Ancient Greece by Plato (427- 347 B.C.), who said that we have the ability to intuitively grasp the ideal nature of those objects.