Twisted Alexander invariants of knots are well-defined up to multiplication of units. We get rid of this multiplicative ambiguity via a combinatorial method and define normalized twisted Alexander invariants. We then show that the invariants coincide with sign-determined Reidemeister torsion in a normalized setting, and refine the duality theorem. We further obtain necessary conditions on the invariants for a knot to be fibered, and study behavior of the highest degrees of the invariants.
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