No Arabic abstract
We study generalizations of a classical link invariant -- the multivariable Alexander polynomial -- to tangles. The starting point is Archibalds tMVA invariant for virtual tangles which lives in the setting of circuit algebras, and whose target space has dimension that is exponential in the number of strands. Using the Hodge star map and restricting to tangles without closed components, we define a reduction of the tMVA to an invariant rMVA which is valued in matrices with Laurent polynomial entries, and so has a much more compact target space. We show the rMVA has the structure of a metamonoid morphism and is further equivalent to a tangle invariant defined by Bar-Natan. This invariant also reduces to the Gassner representation on braids and has a partially defined trace operation for closing open strands of a tangle.
This paper is a brief overview of some of our recent results in collaboration with other authors. The cocycle invariants of classical knots and knotted surfaces are summarized, and some applications are presented.
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.
We show that the sutured Khovanov homology of a balanced tangle in the product sutured manifold D x I has rank 1 if and only if the tangle is isotopic to a braid.
In this paper we present a categorical version of the first and second fundamental theorems of the invariant theory for the quantized symplectic groups. Our methods depend on the theory of braided strict monoidal categories which are pivotal, more explicitly the diagram category of framed tangles.
Kashaev and Reshetikhin previously described a way to define holonomy invariants of knots using quantum $mathfrak{sl}_2$ at a root of unity. These are generalized quantum invariants depend both on a knot $K$ and a representation of the fundamental group of its complement into $mathrm{SL}_2(mathbb{C})$; equivalently, we can think of $mathrm{KR}(K)$ as associating to each knot a function on (a slight generalization of) its character variety. In this paper we clarify some details of their construction. In particular, we show that for $K$ a hyperbolic knot $mathrm{KaRe}(K)$ can be viewed as a function on the geometric component of the $A$-polynomial curve of $K$. We compute some examples at a third root of unity.