For a classical link, Milnor defined a family of isotopy invariants, called Milnor $overline{mu}$-invariants. Recently, Chrisman extended Milnor $overline{mu}$-invariants to welded links by a topological approach. The aim of this paper is to show that Milnor $overline{mu}$-invariants can be extended to welded links by a combinatorial approach. The proof contains an alternative proof for the invariance of the original $overline{mu}$-invariants of classical links.
In a previous paper, the authors proved that Milnor link-homotopy invariants modulo $n$ classify classical string links up to $2n$-move and link-homotopy. As analogues to the welded case, in terms of Milnor invariants, we give here two classifications of welded string links up to $2n$-move and self-crossing virtualization, and up to $V^{n}$-move and self-crossing virtualization, respectively.
We consider Milnor invariants for certain covering links as a generalization of covering linkage invariants formulated by R. Hartley and K. Murasugi. A set of Milnor invariants for covering links is a cobordism invariant of a link, and that this invariant can distinguish some links for which the ordinary Milnor invariants coincide. Moreover, for a Brunnian link $L$, the first non-vanishing Milnor invariants of $L$ is modulo-$2$ congruent to a sum of Milnor invariants of covering links. As a consequence, a sum of linking numbers of iterated covering links gives the first non-vanishing Milnor invariant of $L$ modulo $2$.
Let $n$ be a positive integer. The aim of this paper is to study two local moves $V(n)$ and $V^{n}$ on welded links, which are generalizations of the crossing virtualization. We show that the $V(n)$-move is an unknotting operation on welded knots for any $n$, and give a classification of welded links up to $V(n)$-moves. On the other hand, we give a necessary condition for which two welded links are equivalent up to $V^{n}$-moves. This leads to show that the $V^{n}$-move is not an unknotting operation on welded knots except for $n=1$. We also discuss relations among $V^{n}$-moves, associated core groups and the multiplexing of crossings.
Ribbon 2-knotted objects are locally flat embeddings of surfaces in 4-space which bound immersed 3-manifolds with only ribbon singularities. They appear as topological realizations of welded knotted objects, which is a natural quotient of virtual knot theory. In this paper we consider ribbon tubes and ribbon torus-links, which are natural analogues of string links and links, respectively. We show how ribbon tubes naturally act on the reduced free group, and how this action classifies ribbon tubes up to link-homotopy, that is when allowing each component to cross itself. At the combinatorial level, this provides a classification of welded string links up to self-virtualization. This generalizes a result of Habegger and Lin on usual string links, and the above-mentioned action on the reduced free group can be refined to a general virtual extension of Milnor invariants. As an application, we obtain a classification of ribbon torus-links up to link-homotopy.
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.