We give combinatorial descriptions of the Heegaard Floer homology groups for arbitrary three-manifolds (with coefficients in Z/2). The descriptions are based on presenting the three-manifold as an integer surgery on a link in the three-sphere, and th
en using a grid diagram for the link. We also give combinatorial descriptions of the mod 2 Ozsvath-Szabo mixed invariants of closed four-manifolds, in terms of grid diagrams.
Quasi-alternating links are a natural generalization of alternating links. In this paper, we show that quasi-alternating links are homologically thin for both Khovanov homology and knot Floer homology. In particular, their bigraded homology groups ar
e determined by the signature of the link, together with the Euler characteristic of the respective homology (i.e. the Jones or the Alexander polynomial). The proofs use the exact triangles relating the homology of a link with the homologies of its two resolutions at a crossing.
