Deformations of knots and links in ambient space can be studied combinatorially on their diagrams via local modifications called Reidemeister moves. While it is well-known that, in order to move between equivalent diagrams with Reidemeister moves, one sometimes needs to insert excess crossings, there are significant gaps between the best known lower and upper bounds on the required number of these added crossings. In this article, we study the problem of turning a diagram of a split link into a split diagram, and we show that there exist split links with diagrams requiring an arbitrarily large number of such additional crossings. More precisely, we provide a family of diagrams of split links, so that any sequence of Reidemeister moves transforming a diagram with c crossings into a split diagram requires going through a diagram with Ω(√c) extra crossings. Our proof relies on the framework of bubble tangles, as introduced by the first two authors, and a technique of Chambers and Liokumovitch to turn homotopies into isotopies in the context of Riemannian geometry.

While the problem of computing the genus of a knot is now fairly well understood, no algorithm is known for its four-dimensional variants, both in the smooth and in the topological locally flat category. In this article, we investigate a class of knots and links called Hopf arborescent links, which are obtained as the boundaries of some iterated plumbings of Hopf bands. We show that for such links, computing the genus defects, which measure how much the four-dimensional genera differ from the classical genus, is decidable. Our proof is non-constructive, and is obtained by proving that Seifert surfaces of Hopf arborescent links under a relation of minors defined by containment of their Seifert surfaces form a well-quasi-order.

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