Let L be a link in a thickened annulus. We show that its sutured annular Khovanov homology carries an action of the exterior current algebra of the Lie algebra sl_2. When L is an m-framed n-cable of a knot K in the three-sphere, its sutured annular K
hovanov homology carries a commuting action of the symmetric group S_n. One therefore obtains a knotted Schur-Weyl representation that agrees with classical sl_2 Schur-Weyl duality when K is the Seifert-framed unknot.
Let n be a positive integer. We provide a Khovanov homology proof of the following classical fact: If the closure of an n-strand braid is the n-component unlink, then the braid is trivial.
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.
We investigate two categorified braid conjugacy class invariants, one coming from Khovanov homology and the other from Heegaard Floer homology. We prove that each yields a solution to the word problem but not the conjugacy problem in the braid group.
