A Proposed Correspondence Between NP-Completeness and the Mandelbrot Set via Knot Theory

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.
Log in to save this article

Abstract

The P versus NP question is one of the most profound open problems in theoretical computer science, with implications across mathematics, cryptography, and complexity theory. This work proposes a structured framework establishing a correspondence between the solvability of NP-complete problems, the topological triviality of knots, and the dynamical stability of points in the complex plane. Using the Partition Problem as a case study, we introduce a deterministic “dynamic weaving” algorithm that maps problem instances to braid representations, which are then evaluated using the Jones polynomial. The braids are generated from the orbital paths of points c under the Mandelbrot iteration \( z \mapsto z^2 + c \), with stability conjectured to correspond to solvability. Computational experiments, implemented in SageMath with SnapPy, demonstrate a consistent mapping between solvable instances and the unknot, and unsolvable instances and topologically complex links. The principal open challenge—the derivation of a universal mapping S → c—is formulated precisely, and we outline how its resolution could yield a new class of complexity-theoretic invariants rooted in topology and dynamical systems.

Article activity feed