We explore the geometry linking the shape of a curved mirror surface to the distortions it produces on a scene it reflects. Our analysis is local and differential. We assume a simple calibrated scene composed of lines passing through a point. We demonstrate that local information about the geometry of the surface may be recovered up to the second order from either the orientation and curvature ...

In this note, we prove a lower bound for the positive kinkiness of a closed braid which we then use to derive an estimate for the positive kinkiness of a link in terms of its Seifert system. As an application, we show that certain pretzel knots cannot be unknotted using only positive crossing changes. We also describe a subgroup of infinite rank in the smooth knot concordance group of which no ...

In this work, we study the cellular decomposition of S induced by a filling pair curves v and w, \(Dec_{v,w}(S) = {\setminus } (v \cup w)\), its connection to distance function d(v, w) in curve graph closed orientable surface genus g. Building on work Leasure, efficient geodesics were introduced first author joint with Margalit Menasco 2016, giving an algorithm that begins non-separating determ...