We construct knot invariants on the basis of ascribing Euclidean geometric values to a triangulation of sphere S^3 where the knot lies. The main new feature of this construction compared to the author's earlier papers on manifold invariants is that now nonzero "deficit angles" (in the terminology of Regge calculus) can also be handled. Moreover, the knot goes exactly along those edges of triangulations that have nonzero deficit angles.
This paper explores a particular statistical model on 6-valent graphs with special properties which turns out to be invariant with respect to certain Roseman moves if the graph is the singular point graph of a diagram of a 2-knot. The approach uses the technic of the tetrahedral complex cohomology. We emphasize that this model considered on regular 3d-lattices appears to be integrable. We also set out some ideas about the possible connection of this construction with the area of topological quantum field theories in dimension 4.
Starting with an ideal triangulation of the interior of a compact 3-manifold M with boundary, no component of which is a 2-sphere, we provide a construction, called an inflation of the ideal triangulation, to obtain a strongly related triangulations of M itself. Besides a step-by-step algorithm for such a construction, we provide examples of an inflation of the two-tetrahedra ideal triangulation of the complement of the figure-eight knot in the 3-sphere, giving a minimal triangulation, having ten tetrahedra, of the figure-eight knot exterior. As another example, we provide an inflation of the …
This paper considers "geometric" ideal triangulations of cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds, i.e. decompositions into positive volume ideal hyperbolic tetrahedra. We exhibit infinitely many geometric ideal triangulations of the figure eight knot complement. As far as we know, this is the first construction of infinitely many geometric triangulations of a cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold. In contrast, our approach does not extend to the figure eight sister manifold, and it is unknown if there are infinitely many geometric triangulations for this manifold.
The hyperbolic structure on a 3-dimensional cone-manifold with a knot as singularity can often be deformed into a limiting Euclidean structure. In the present paper we show that the respective normalised Euclidean volume is always an algebraic number. This stands in contrast to hyperbolic volumes whose number-theoretic nature is usually quite complicated.
We present an invariant of a three-dimensional manifold with a framed knot in it based on the Reidemeister torsion of an acyclic complex of Euclidean geometric origin. To show its nontriviality, we calculate the invariant for some framed (un)knots in lens spaces. Our invariant is related to a finite-dimensional fermionic topological quantum field theory.
An ideal triangulation $\mathcal{T}$ of a hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ with one cusp is non-peripheral if no edge of $\mathcal{T}$ is homotopic to a curve in the boundary torus of $M$. For such a triangulation, the gluing and completeness equations can be solved to recover the hyperbolic structure of $M$. A planar projection of a knot gives four ideal cell decompositions of its complement (minus 2 balls), two of which are ideal triangulations that use 4 (resp., 5) ideal tetrahedra per crossing. Our main result is that these ideal triangulations are non-peripheral for all planar, reduced, alternat…
Ropelength and embedding thickness are related measures of geometric complexity of classical knots and links in Euclidean space. In their recent work, Freedman and Krushkal posed a question regarding lower bounds for embedding thickness of $n$-component links in terms of the Milnor linking numbers. The main goal of the current paper is to provide such estimates and thus generalizing the known linking number bound. In the process, we collect several facts about finite type invariants and ropelength/crossing number of knots. We give examples of families of knots, where such estimates behave bett…
It is conjectured that every cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold has a decomposition into positive volume ideal hyperbolic tetrahedra (a "geometric" triangulation of the manifold). Under a mild homology assumption on the manifold we construct topological ideal triangulations which admit a strict angle structure, which is a necessary condition for the triangulation to be geometric. In particular, every knot or link complement in the 3-sphere has such a triangulation. We also give an example of a triangulation without a strict angle structure, where the obstruction is related to the homology hypothesis…
Bott and Taubes used integrals over configuration spaces to produce finite-type a.k.a. Vassiliev knot invariants. Cattaneo, Cotta-Ramusino and Longoni then used these methods together with graph cohomology to construct "Vassiliev classes" in the real cohomology of spaces of knots in higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces, as first promised by Kontsevich. Here we construct integer-valued cohomology classes in spaces of knots and links in Euclidean spaces of dimension greater than three. We construct such a class for any integer-valued graph cocycle, by the method of gluing compactified configurati…
In this article, we introduce rack invariants of oriented Legendrian knots in the 3-dimensional Euclidean space endowed with the standard contact structure, which we call Legendrian racks. These invariants form a generalization of the quandle invariants of knots. These rack invariants do not result in a complete invariant, but detect some of the geometric properties such as cusps in a Legendrian knot. In the case of topologically trivial Legendrian knots, we test this family of invariants for its strengths and limitations. We further prove that these invariants form a natural generalization of…
Bott and Taubes constructed knot invariants by integrating differential forms along the fiber of a bundle over the space of knots, generalizing the Gauss linking integral. Their techniques were later used to construct real cohomology classes in spaces of knots and links in higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces. In previous work, we constructed cohomology classes in knot spaces with arbitrary coefficients by integrating via a Pontrjagin--Thom construction. We carry out a similar construction over the space of string links, but with a refinement in which configuration spaces are glued together acc…
