Unbounded hardness conjecture for unknot diagrams

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Let mm be an integer and let D^\hat{\mathcal{D}} be the 00-crossing diagram of the unknot. A diagram of the unknot D\mathcal{D} has nn crossings if cr⁡(D)=n\operatorname{cr}(\mathcal{D})=n. Unbounded hardness conjecture. For every integer mm, there exists a diagram of the unknot D\mathcal{D} with nn crossings such that every sequence of Reidemeister moves from D\mathcal{D} to D^\hat{\mathcal{D}} passes through a diagram with at least n+mn+m crossings. Equivalently, the number of extra crossings required to untangle unknot diagrams is unbounded. The conjecture is folklore; the context notes that the hardest previously known examples had only been verified to require at least three extra crossings.

References

Primary source

Corentin Lunel, Arnaud de Mesmay and Jonathan Spreer, “Hard diagrams of split links”, arXiv:2412.03372 (2026).

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