We prove that the generating functions for the one row/column colored HOMFLY-PT invariants of arborescent links are specializations of the generating functions of the motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants of appropriate quivers that we naturally associate with these links. Our approach extends the previously established tangles-quivers correspondence for rational tangles to algebraic tangles by developing gluing formulas for HOMFLY-PT skein generating functions under Conway's tangle addition. As a consequence, we prove the conjectural links-quivers correspondence of Kucharski-Reineke-Stošić-Sulkowski for all arborescent links.
In this paper we study oriented quantum coalgebras which are structures closely related to oriented quantum algebras. We study the relationship between oriented quantum coalgebras and oriented quantum algebras and the relationship between oriented quantum coalgebras and quantum coalgebras. We show that there are regular isotopy invariants of oriented 1-1 tangles and of oriented knots and links associated to oriented and twist oriented quantum coalgebras respectively. There are many parallels between the theory of oriented quantum coalgebras and the theory of quantum coalgebras
We prove that the generating functions for the colored HOMFLY-PT polynomials of rational links are specializations of the generating functions of the motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants of appropriate quivers that we naturally associate with these links. This shows that the conjectural links-quivers correspondence of Kucharski-Reineke-Stošić-Sułkowski as well as the LMOV conjecture hold for rational links. Along the way, we extend the links-quivers correspondence to tangles and, thus, explore elements of a skein theory for motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants.
We introduce and explore the relation between knot invariants and quiver representation theory, which follows from the identification of quiver quantum mechanics in D-brane systems representing knots. We identify various structural properties of quivers associated to knots, and identify such quivers explicitly in many examples, including some infinite families of knots, all knots up to 6 crossings, and some knots with thick homology. Moreover, based on these properties, we derive previously unknown expressions for colored HOMFLY-PT polynomials and superpolynomials for various knots. For all kn…
We argue how to identify supersymmetric quiver quantum mechanics description of BPS states, which arise in string theory in brane systems representing knots. This leads to a surprising relation between knots and quivers: to a given knot we associate a quiver, so that various types of knot invariants are expressed in terms of characteristics of a moduli space of representations of the corresponding quiver. This statement can be regarded as a novel type of categorification of knot invariants, and among its various consequences we find that Labastida-Mariño-Ooguri-Vafa (LMOV) invariants of a knot…
The central discovery of $2d$ conformal theory was holomorphic factorization, which expressed correlation functions through bilinear combinations of conformal blocks, which are easily cut and joined without a need to sum over the entire huge Hilbert space of states. Somewhat similar, when a link diagram is glued from tangles, the link polynomial is a multilinear combination of {\it tangle blocks} summed over just a few representations of intermediate states. This turns to be a powerful approach because the same tangles appear as constituents of very different knots so that they can be extracte…
We discuss an action of the Grothendieck-Teichmüller proalgebraic group on the linear span of proalgebraic tangles, oriented tangles completed by a filtration of Vassiliev. The action yields a motivic structure on tangles. We derive distinguished properties of the action particularly on proalgebraic string links and on proalgebraic knots which can not be observed in the action on proalgebraic braids. By exploiting the properties, we explicitly calculate the inverse image of the trivial (the chordless) chord diagram under the Kontsevich isomorphism.
The knots-quivers correspondence states that various characteristics of a knot are encoded in the corresponding quiver and the moduli space of its representations. However, this correspondence is not a bijection: more than one quiver may be assigned to a given knot and encode the same information. In this work we study this phenomenon systematically and show that it is generic rather than exceptional. First, we find conditions that characterize equivalent quivers. Then we show that equivalent quivers arise in families that have the structure of permutohedra, and the set of all equivalent quive…
We generalize the $F_K$ invariant, i.e. $\widehat{Z}$ for the complement of a knot $K$ in the 3-sphere, the knots-quivers correspondence, and $A$-polynomials of knots, and find several interconnections between them. We associate an $F_K$ invariant to any branch of the $A$-polynomial of $K$ and we work out explicit expressions for several simple knots. We show that these $F_K$ invariants can be written in the form of a quiver generating series, in analogy with the knots-quivers correspondence. We discuss various methods to obtain such quiver representations, among others using $R$-matrices. We …
We introduce and explore the relation between quivers and 3-manifolds with the topology of the knot complement. This idea can be viewed as an adaptation of the knots-quivers correspondence to Gukov-Manolescu invariants of knot complements (also known as $F_K$ or $\hat{Z}$). Apart from assigning quivers to complements of $T^{(2,2p+1)}$ torus knots, we study the physical interpretation in terms of the BPS spectrum and general structure of 3d $\mathcal{N}=2$ theories associated to both sides of the correspondence. We also make a step towards categorification by proposing a $t$-deformation of all …
We enhance the psyquandle counting invariant for singular knots and pseudoknots using quivers analogously to quandle coloring quivers. This enables us to extend the in-degree polynomial invariants from quandle coloring quiver theory to the case of singular knots and pseudoknots. As a side effect we obtain biquandle coloring quivers and in-degree polynomial invariants for classical and virtual knots and links.
We introduce explicit holonomy perturbations of the Chern-Simons functional on a 3-ball containing a pair of unknotted arcs. These perturbations give us a concrete local method for making the moduli spaces of flat singular SO(3) connections relevant to Kronheimer and Mrowka's singular instanton knot homology non-degenerate. The mechanism for this study is a (Lagrangian) intersection diagram which arises, through restriction of representations, from a tangle decomposition of a knot. When one of the tangles is trivial, our perturbations allow us to study isolated intersections of two Lagrangians…
We give a fresh introduction to the Khovanov Homology theory for knots and links, with special emphasis on its extension to tangles, cobordisms and 2-knots. By staying within a world of topological pictures a little longer than in other articles on the subject, the required extension becomes essentially tautological. And then a simple application of an appropriate functor (a `TQFT') to our pictures takes them to the familiar realm of complexes of (graded) vector spaces and ordinary homological invariants.
In this paper we find and explore the correspondence between quivers, torus knots, and combinatorics of counting paths. Our first result pertains to quiver representation theory -- we find explicit formulae for classical generating functions and Donaldson-Thomas invariants of an arbitrary symmetric quiver. We then focus on quivers corresponding to $(r,s)$ torus knots and show that their classical generating functions, in the extremal limit and framing $rs$, are generating functions of lattice paths under the line of the slope $r/s$. Generating functions of such paths satisfy extremal A-polynom…
We employ the sl(2) foam cohomology to define a cohomology theory for oriented framed tangles whose components are labelled by irreducible representations of U_q(sl(2)). We show that the corresponding colored invariants of tangles can be assembled into invariants of bigger tangles. For the case of knots and links, the corresponding theory is a categorification of the colored Jones polynomial, and provides a tool for efficient computations of the resulting colored invariant of knots and links. Our theory is defined over the Gaussian integers Z[i] (and more generally over Z[i][a,h], where a,h ar…
Biquandle brackets define invariants of classical and virtual knots and links using skein invariants of biquandle-colored knots and links. Biquandle coloring quivers categorify the biquandle counting invariant in the sense of defining quiver-valued enhancements which decategorify to the counting invariant. In this paper we unite the two ideas to define biquandle bracket quivers, providing new categorifications of biquandle brackets. In particular, our construction provides an infinite family of categorifications of the Jones polynomial and other classical skein invariants.
In this paper, we use skein-theoretic techniques to classify all virtual knot polynomials and trivalent graph invariants with certain smallness conditions. The first half of the paper classifies all virtual knot polynomials giving non-trivial invariants strictly smaller than the one given by the Higman-Sims spin model. In particular, we exhibit a family of skein theories coming from $\text{Rep}(O(2))$ with an interesting braiding. In addition, all skein theories of oriented virtual tangles with some smallness conditions are classified. In the second half of the paper, we classify all non-trivi…
A bottom tangle is a tangle in a cube consisting only of arc components, each of which has the two endpoints on the bottom line of the cube, placed next to each other. We introduce a subcategory B of the category of framed, oriented tangles, which acts on the set of bottom tangles. We give a finite set of generators of B, which provides an especially convenient way to generate all the bottom tangles, and hence all the framed, oriented links, via closure. We also define a kind of "braided Hopf algebra action" on the set of bottom tangles. Using the universal invariant of bottom tangles associat…
We enhance the quandle coloring quiver invariant of oriented knots and links with quandle modules. This results in a two-variable polynomial invariant with specializes to the previous quandle module polynomial invariant as well as to the quandle counting invariant. We provide example computations to show that the enhancement is proper in the sense that it distinguishes knots and links with the same quandle module polynomial.
Recently, Bigelow defined a diagrammatic method for calculating the Alexander polynomial of a knot or link by resolving crossings in a planar algebra. I will present my multivariate version of Bigelow's calculation. The advantage to my algorithm is that it generalizes to a multivariate tangle invariant up to Reidemeister I. I will conclude with a possible link to subfactor planar algebras from the work of Jones and Penneys.
Quandle coloring quivers are directed graph-valued invariants of oriented knots and links, defined using a choice of finite quandle $X$ and set $S\subset\mathrm{Hom}(X,X)$ of endomorphisms. From a quandle coloring quiver, a polynomial knot invariant known as the \textit{in-degree quiver polynomial} is defined. We consider quandle coloring quiver invariants for oriented surface-links, represented by marked graph diagrams. We provide example computations for all oriented surface-links with ch-index up to 10 for choices of quandles and endomorphisms.
We consider a quiver structure on the set of quandle colorings of an oriented knot or link diagram. This structure contains a wealth of knot and link invariants and provides a categorification of the quandle counting invariant in the most literal sense, i.e., giving the set of quandle colorings the structure of a small category which is unchanged by Reidemeister moves. We derive some new enhancements of the counting invariant from this quiver structure and show that the enhancements are proper with explicit examples.
There is a one-to-one correspondence between strong inversions on knots in the three-sphere and a special class of four-ended tangles. We compute the reduced Khovanov homology of such tangles for all strong inversions on knots with up to 9 crossings, and discuss these computations in the context of earlier work by the second author. In particular, we provide a counterexample to [Conjecture 29, arXiv:1311.1085] as well as a refinement of and additional evidence for [Conjecture 28, arXiv:1311.1085].
A handlebody-knot is a handlebody embedded in the 3-sphere. We establish a uniform method to construct invariants for handlebody-links. We introduce the category $\mathcal{T}$ of handlebody-tangles and present it by generators and relations. The result tells us that every functor on $\mathcal{T}$ that gives rise to invariants is derived from what we call a quantum-commutative quantum-symmetric algebra in the target category. The example of such algebras of our main concern is finite-dimensional unimodular Hopf algebras. We investigate how those Hopf algebras give rise to handlebody-knot invari…
This is the first in a series of papers studying w-knotted objects (w-knots, w-braids, w-tangles, etc.), which make a class of knotted objects which is {w}ider but {w}eaker than their usual counterparts. The group of w-braids was studied (as "{w}elded braids") by Fenn-Rimanyi-Rourke and was shown to be isomorphic to the McCool group of "basis-conjugating" automorphisms of a free group Fn. Brendle-Hatcher, tracing back to Goldsmith, have shown this group to be a group of movies of flying rings in R3. Satoh studied several classes of w-knotted objects (as "{w}eakly-virtual") and has shown them t…