English

Conway polynomial and Magnus expansion

Geometric Topology 2010-01-22 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

The Magnus expansion is a universal finite type invariant of pure braids with values in the space of horizontal chord diagrams. The Conway polynomial composed with the short circuit map from braids to knots gives rise to a series of finite type invariants of pure braids and thus factors through the Magnus map. We describe explicitly the resulting mapping from horizontal chord diagrams on 3 strands to univariate polynomials and evaluate it on the Drinfeld associator obtaining, conjecturally, a beautiful generating function whose coefficients are integer combinations of multiple zeta values.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1001.2500,
  title  = {Conway polynomial and Magnus expansion},
  author = {S. V. Duzhin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.2500},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

12 pages, several figures. Typos and inaccuracies corrected, bibliography updated, an acknowledgement added

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:34:56.879Z