RL unknotter, hard unknots and unknotting number

arXiv:2603.07955v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We develop a reinforcement learning pipeline for simplifying knot diagrams. A trained agent learns move proposals and a value heuristic for navigating Reidemeister moves. The pipeline applies to arbitrary knots and links; we test it on ``very hard'' unknot diagrams and, using diagram inflation, on 4_1#9_{10} where we recover the recently established and surprising upper bound of three for the unknotting number. In addition, we explain a self-improving workbook-driven extension of the pipeline that systematically improves unknotting number upper bounds on the list of prime knots.

Source: arXiv cs.LG | 2026-04-30