Miscellaneous papers

• [1] Integration of singular braid invariants and graph cohomology,
  Transactions of the AMS 350 (1998), 1791-1809. Postscript PDF
  This paper attempts to explain some of the mysteries underlying the existence of Vassiliev knot invariants from a topological point of view, in the easier case of braids. In particular we prove necessary and sufficient conditions for an arbitrary invariant of singular braids with m double points to be ``integrable'' to a braid invariant. This gives a slight generalization of the existence theorem for Vassiliev invariants of braids.

• [2] Topological bifurcations of attracting 2-tori of quasiperiodically driven oscillators (with B. Spears and A. Szeri),
  Journal of Nonlinear Science 15 (2005), 423-452.
  I was a "topology consultant" for this paper, which studies some knotted 2-tori in R^2 x T^2 that arise as attractors in a certain dynamical system of interest in mechanical engineering. Along the way, I was surprised to learn that the following seemingly basic topological question is apparently unsolved: if two closed braids are isotopic as links in R^2 x S^1, then must they be isotopic through closed braids? (For braids in R^2 x I, the answer is yes by a classical theorem of Artin.)

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