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 give a new construction of a Khovanov homotopy type. We show that this construction gives a space stably homotopy equivalent to the Khovanov homotopy types constructed in [LS14a] and [HKK] and, as a corollary, that those two constructions give equivalent spaces. We show that the construction behaves well with respect to disjoint unions, connected sums and mirrors, verifying several conjectures from [LS14a]. Finally, combining these results with computations from [LS14c] and the refined s-invariant from [LS14b] we obtain new results about the slice genera of certain knots.
A quandle is a set that has a binary operation satisfying three conditions corresponding to the Reidemeister moves. Homology theories of quandles have been developed in a way similar to group homology, and have been applied to knots and knotted surfaces. In this paper, a homology theory is defined that unifies group and quandle homology theories. A quandle that is a union of groups with the operation restricting to conjugation on each group component is called a multiple conjugation quandle (MCQ, defined rigorously within). In this definition, compatibilities between the group and quandle operations are imposed which are motivated by considerations on colorings of handlebody-links. A homology theory defined here for MCQs take into consideration both group and quandle operations, as well as their compatibility. The first homology group is characterized, and the notion of extensions by $2$-cocycles is provided. Degenerate subcomplexes are defined in relation to simplicial decompositions of prismatic (products of simplices) complexes and group inverses. Cocycle invariants are also defined for handlebody-links.