Bottom tangles and universal invariants

Abstract

A bottom tangle is a tangle in a cube consisting only of arc components, each of which has the two endpoints on the bottom line of the cube, placed next to each other. We introduce a subcategory B of the category of framed, oriented tangles, which acts on the set of bottom tangles. We give a finite set of generators of B, which provides an especially convenient way to generate all the bottom tangles, and hence all the framed, oriented links, via closure. We also define a kind of "braided Hopf algebra action" on the set of bottom tangles.