arXiv research

New method proves Lickorish-Millett formulae for link polynomials.

We use the idea of expressing a nonoriented link as a sum of all oriented links corresponding to the link to present a short proof of the Lickorish-Millett-Turaev formula for the Kauffman polynomial at $z= -a- a^{-1}$. Our approach explains the observation made by Lickorish and Millett that the formula is the generatin…

We give examples showing that Kidwell's inequality for the maximal degree of the Brandt-Lickorish-Millett-Ho polynomial is in general not sharp.

We show how the signed evaluations of link polynomials can be used to calculate unknotting numbers. We use the Jones-Rong value of the Brandt-Lickorish-Millett-Ho polynomial Q to calculate the unknotting numbers of 8_{16}, 9_{49} and 6 further new entries in Kawauchi's tables. Another method is developed by applying an…

We study the Chern-Simons partition function of orthogonal quantum group invariants, and propose a new orthogonal Labastida-Mariño-Ooguri-Vafa conjecture as well as degree conjecture for free energy associated to the orthogonal Chern-Simons partition function. We prove the degree conjecture and some interesting cases o…

Using the recent Gauss diagram formulas for Vassiliev invariants of Polyak-Viro-Fiedler and combining these formulas with the Bennequin inequality, we prove several inequalities for positive knots relating their Vassiliev invariants, genus and degrees of the Jones polynomial. As a consequence, we prove that for any of …

It is a natural question to ask whether two links are equivalent by the following moves -- parallel parts of a link are changed to k-times half-twisted parts and if they are, how many moves are needed to go from one link to the other. In particular if k=2 and the second link is a trivial link it is the question about t…