Symmetric Energy Relaxations

Hopf link

A tangled Hopf link with red and blue components relaxing

Non-trivial knot

Here is an example of a non-trivial knot relaxing to a nice configuration and two unknots relaxing to (almost) round circles via the symmetric energy force.

Click here to see an MPEG movie of this knot relaxing.

Unknot

Click here to see an MPEG movie of this unknot relaxing to a circle.

Swirled unknot

Click here to see an MPEG movie of this unknot relaxing to a circle. This one looks really neat if you put your MPEG viewer into `swing` mode (start to end and backwards to start). My MPEG viewer needs to be told to `play every frame` as well to get smooth motion (especially when going backwards).