Four triangle-free intrinsically knotted graphs with 22 edges

Source abstract

An intrinsically knotted graph is one for which every spatial embedding contains a nontrivially knotted cycle. Classifying such graphs is a central problem in spatial graph theory. It is known that every intrinsically knotted graph has at least 21 edges, and the case of 21 edges has been completely resolved. For 22 edges, however, the classification remains incomplete. In particular, exactly eight triangle-free examples with a vertex of degree at least 5 are known, leaving only the case in which all vertices have degree 3 or 4. In this paper, we introduce a method for detecting intrinsic knottedness based on induced subgraphs obtained by deleting pairs of vertices. Using this method, we classify all triangle-free intrinsically knotted graphs with 22 edges having eight vertices of degree~4 and four of degree~3. We prove that there are exactly four: Cousins 43, 105, and 109 in the $E_9\!+\!e$ family and the graph $H_{12}\! +\! e$ in the $H_9\!+\!e$ family.