English

On the Khovanov homology of 3-braids

Geometric Topology 2025-10-06 v2

Abstract

We prove the conjecture of Przytycki and Sazdanovic that the Khovanov homology of the closure of a 3-stranded braid only contains torsion of order 2. This conjecture has been known for six out of seven classes in the Murasugi-classification of 3-braids and we show it for the remaining class. Our proof also works for the other classes and relies on Bar-Natan's version of Khovanov homology for tangles as well as his delooping and cancellation techniques, and the reduced integral Bar-Natan--Lee--Turner spectral sequence. We also show that the Knight-move conjecture holds for 3-braids.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.11547,
  title  = {On the Khovanov homology of 3-braids},
  author = {Dirk Schuetz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.11547},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

37 pages, 12 figures, many tikzpictures