We construct an Alexander type invariant for oriented doodles from a deformation of the Tits representation of the twin group and from the Chebyshev polynomials of second kind. Similar to the Alexander polynomial, our invariant vanishes on unlinked doodles with more than one component. We also include values of our invariant on several doodles.
Study of certain isotopy classes of a finite collection of immersed circles without triple or higher intersections on closed oriented surfaces can be thought of as a planar analogue of virtual knot theory where the genus zero case corresponds to classical knot theory. Alexander and Markov theorems for the genus zero case are known where the role of groups is played by twin groups, a class of right angled Coxeter groups with only far commutativity relations. The purpose of this paper is to prove Alexander and Markov theorems for higher genus case where the role of groups is played by a new clas…
A. Ishii and K. Oshiro introduced the notion of an $f$-twisted Alexander matrix. This notion is a quandle version of the twisted Alexander matrix which was introduced by M. Wada. They showed that the twisted Alexander matrix of a pair of a link group and a group representation can be recovered from the $f$-twisted Alexander matrix of a pair of a link quandle and a quandle homomorphism. In this paper, we study a relationship between the $f$-twisted Alexander matrix and the quandle cocycle invariant. As an application, we show that an $f$-twisted Alexander invariant of knot quandles is a really …
Given a homomorphism from a knot group to a fixed group, we introduce an element of a $K_1$-group, which is a generalization of (twisted) Alexander polynomials. We compare this $K_1$-class with other Alexander polynomials. In terms of semi-local rings, we compute the $K_1$-classes of some knots and show their non-triviality. We also introduce metabelian Alexander polynomials.
We study how the genus, the simplicial volume and the $L^2$-Alexander invariant of W. Li and W. Zhang can detect individual knots among all others. In particular, we use various techniques coming from hyperbolic geometry and topology to prove that the $L^2$-Alexander invariant contains strictly more information than the pair (genus, simplicial volume). Along the way we prove that the $L^2$-Alexander invariant detects the figure-eight knot $4_1$, the twist knot $5_2$ and an infinite family of cables on the figure-eight knot.
Fox conjectured the Alexander polynomial of an alternating knot is trapezoidal, i.e. the coefficients first increase, then stabilize and finally decrease in a symmetric way. Recently, Hirasawa and Murasugi further conjectured a relation between the number of the stable coefficients in the Alexander polynomial and the signature invariant. In this paper we prove the Hirasawa-Murasugi conjecture for two-bridge knots.
We revisit the issue of the existence of infinitely many distinct prime knots with the same Alexander invariant. We present infinitely many distinct families, each family made up of infinitely many distinct knots. Within each family, the Alexander invariant is the same. Unlike other examples in the literature, ours are elementary and based on a sub-collection of pretzel knots with three tassels.
Lin and Wang defined a model of random walks on knot diagrams and interprete the Alexnader polynomials and the colored Jones polynomials as Ihara zeta functions, i.e. zeta functions defined by counting cycles on the knot diagram. Using this explanation, they gave a more conceptual proof for the Melvin-Morton conjecture. In this paper, we give an analogous zeta function expression for the twisted Alexander invariants.
There are many studies about twisted Alexander invariants for knots and links, but calculations of twisted Alexander invariants for spatial graphs, handlebody-knots, and surface-links have not been demonstrated well. In this paper, we give some remarks to calculate the twisted Alexander ideals for spatial graphs, handlebody-knots and surface-links, and observe their behaviors. For spatial graphs, we calculate the invariants of Suzuki's theta-curves and show that the invariants are nontrivial for Suzuki's theta-curves whose Alexander ideals are trivial. For handlebody-knots, we give a remark on…
Joyce observed that the Alexander invariant and the medial quandle of a classical knot are equivalent to each other, as invariants. In the present paper, we discuss the rather complicated extension of Joyce's observation to several different medial quandles and reduced (one-variable) Alexander modules associated with classical links. The theme is that for links, medial quandles provide stronger invariants than reduced Alexander modules.
Ishii and Oshiro introduced the notion of an $f$-twisted Alexander matrix, which is a quandle version of a twisted Alexander matrix and defined an invariant of finitely presented quandles. In this paper, we study $f$-twisted Alexander matrices of certain quandles with the Alexander pair obtained from a quandle 2-cocycle. We show that the 0-th elementary ideal of $f$-twisted Alexander matrix of the knot quandle of a surface knot with the Alexander pair obtained from a quandle 2-cocycle can be described with the Carter-Saito-Satoh's invariant. We also discuss a relationship between $f$-twisted A…
Given a homomorphism from a link group to a group, we introduce a $K_1$-class in another way, which is a generalization of the 1-variable Alexander polynomial. We compare the $K_1$-class with $K_1$-classes in \cite{Nos} and with Reidemeister torsions. As a corollary, we show a relation to Reidemeister torsions of finite cyclic covering spaces, and show reciprocity in some senses.
As an extension of Reshetikhin and Turaev's invariant, Costantino, Geer and Patureau-Mirand constructed $3$-manifold invariants in the setting of relative $G$-modular categories, which include both semisimple and non-semisimple ribbon tensor categories as examples. In this paper, we follow their method to construct a $3$-manifold invariant from Viro's $\mathfrak{gl}(1\vert 1)$-Alexander polynomial. We take lens spaces $L(7, 1)$ and $L(7, 2)$ as examples to show that this invariant can distinguish homotopy equivalent manifolds.
Let $Δ_{L,ρ_n}(t)$ be the twisted Alexander polynomial with respect to the representation given by the composition of the lift of the holonomy representation of a certain hyperbolic link $L$ and the $n$-dimensional irreducible complex representation of $\text{SL}(2,\mathbb C)$. We consider a sequence of $Δ_{L,ρ_n}(t)$ and extract the volume of the complement of $L$ from the asymptotic behaviour of the sequence obtained by evaluating $t=1$ or $t=-1$.
Ribbon tangles are proper embeddings of tori and cylinders in the $4$-ball~$B^4$, "bounding" $3$-manifolds with only ribbon disks as singularities. We construct an Alexander invariant $\mathsf{A}$ of ribbon tangles equipped with a representation of the fundamental group of their exterior in a free abelian group $G$. This invariant induces a functor in a certain category $\mathsf{R}ib_G$ of tangles, which restricts to the exterior powers of Burau-Gassner representation for ribbon braids, that are analogous to usual braids in this context. We define a circuit algebra $\mathsf{C}ob_G$ over the op…
We introduce an Alexander polynomial for MOY graphs. For a framed trivalent MOY graph $\mathbb{G}$, we refine the construction and obtain a framed ambient isotopy invariant $Δ_{(\mathbb{G},c)}(t)$. The invariant $Δ_{(\mathbb{G}, c)}(t)$ satisfies a series of relations, which we call MOY-type relations, and conversely these relations determine $Δ_{(\mathbb{G}, c)}(t)$. Using them we provide a graphical definition of the Alexander polynomial of a link. Finally, we discuss some properties and applications of our invariants.
We show that every periodic virtual knot can be realized as the closure of a periodic virtual braid and use this to study the Alexander invariants of periodic virtual knots. If $K$ is a $q$-periodic and almost classical knot, we show that its quotient knot $K_*$ is also almost classical, and in the case $q=p^r$ is a prime power, we establish an analogue of Murasugi's congruence relating the Alexander polynomials of $K$ and $K_*$ over the integers modulo $p$. This result is applied to the problem of determining the possible periods of a virtual knot $K$. One consequence is that if $K$ is an alm…
In this paper, a regional knot invariant is constructed. Like the Wirtinger presentation of a knot group, each planar region contributes a generator, and each crossing contributes a relation. The invariant is call a tridle of the link. As in the quandle theory, one can define Alexander quandle and get Alexander polynomial from it. For link diagram, one can also define a linear tridle and its presentation matrix. A polynomial invariant can be derive from the matrix just like the Alexander polynomial case.
For a knot in the 3-sphere, the Upsilon invariant is a piecewise linear function defined on the interval [0,2]. For an L-space knot, the Upsilon invariant is determined only by the Alexander polynomial of the knot. We exhibit infinitely many pairs of hyperbolic L-space knots such that two knots of each pair have distinct Alexander polynomials, so they are not concordant, but share the same Upsilon invariant. Conversely, we examine the restorability of the Alexander polynomial of an L-space knot from the Upsilon invariant through the Legendre-Fenchel transformation.
The Bott-Cattaneo-Rossi invariant $(Z_k)_{k\in \mathbb N\setminus\{0,1\}}$ is an invariant of long knots $\mathbb R^n\hookrightarrow\mathbb R^{n+2}$ for odd $n$, which reads as a combination of integrals over configuration spaces. In this article, we compute such integrals and prove explicit formulas for (generalized) $Z_k$ in terms of Alexander polynomials, or in terms of linking numbers of some cycles of a hypersurface bounded by the knot. Our formulas, which hold for all null-homologous long knots in homology $\mathbb R^{n+2}$ at least when $n\equiv 1\mod 4$, conversely express the Reidemei…
Ozsváth-Szabó proved the property that any coefficient of Alexander polynomial of lens space knot is either $\pm1$ or $0$ and the non-zero coefficients are alternating. Combining the formulas of the Alexander polynomial of lens space knots due to Kadokami-Yamada and Ichihara-Saito-Teragaito, we refine Ozsváth-Szabó's property as the existence of simple curves included in a region in ${\Bbb R}^2$. The existence of curves, that has no end-points connected, is just 1-component in a region, can search distribution of non-zero coefficients of the Alexander polynomial of the lens space knot. This cu…
We address the primary decomposition of the knot concordance group in terms of the solvable filtration and higher-order von Neumann $ρ$-invariants by Cochran, Orr, and Teichner. We show that for a nonnegative integer n, if the connected sum of two n-solvable knots with coprime Alexander polynomials is slice, then each of the knots has vanishing von Neumann $ρ$-invariants of order n. This gives positive evidence for the conjecture that nonslice knots with coprime Alexander polynomials are not concordant. As an application, we show that if K is one of Cochran-Orr-Teichner's knots which are the f…