English

Zeroes of the Jones polynomial

Statistical Mechanics 2009-11-07 v2

Abstract

We study the distribution of zeroes of the Jones polynomial VK(t)V_K(t) for a knot KK. We have computed numerically the roots of the Jones polynomial for all prime knots with N10N\leq 10 crossings, and found the zeroes scattered about the unit circle t=1|t|=1 with the average distance to the circle approaching a nonzero value as NN increases. For torus knots of the type (m,n)(m,n) we show that all zeroes lie on the unit circle with a uniform density in the limit of either mm or nn\to \infty, a fact confirmed by our numerical findings. We have also elucidated the relation connecting the Jones polynomial with the Potts model, and used this relation to derive the Jones polynomial for a repeating chain knot with 3n3n crossings for general nn. It is found that zeroes of its Jones polynomial lie on three closed curves centered about the points 1,i1, i and i-i. In addition, there are two isolated zeroes located one each near the points t±=e±2πi/3t_\pm = e^{\pm 2\pi i/3} at a distance of the order of 3(n+2)/23^{-(n+2)/2}. Closed-form expressions are deduced for the closed curves in the limit of nn\to \infty.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0105013,
  title  = {Zeroes of the Jones polynomial},
  author = {F. Y. Wu and J. Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0105013},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

12 pages, 5 figures