In knot theory, a branch of topology, a Brunnian link is a nontrivial link that becomes a set of trivial unlinked circles if any one component is removed. In other words, cutting any loop frees all the other loops.
The standard braid is Brunnian: if one removes the black strand, the blue strand is always on top of the red strand, and they are thus not braided around each other; likewise for removing other strands.
Rainbow loom bracelet showing Brunian chains
In mathematical knot theory, a link is a collection of knots which do not intersect, but which may be linked together. A knot can be described as a link with one component. Links and knots are studied in a branch of mathematics called knot theory. Implicit in this definition is that there is a trivial reference link, usually called the unlink, but the word is also sometimes used in context where there is no notion of a trivial link.
The Hopf link is cobordant to the unlink.