Related papers: A simple formula for the Casson-Walker invariant
This short survey, which was written to accompany a minicourse at the BIRS conference "Topology in dimension 4.5", concerns invariants of knotted $2$-spheres in $S^4$, also known as $2$-knots. It covers invariants extracted from the…
The linking number is the simplest link invariant given by Gauss; it is the first Gauss diagram formula expressed by one arrow among two circles. Proceeding the next stage, we study the second Gauss diagram formula consisting of two arrows…
We use the Chern-Simons quantum field theory in order to prove a recently conjectured limitation on the 1/K expansion of the Jones polynomial of a knot and its relation to the Alexander polynomial. This limitation allows us to derive a…
We first present three graphic surgery formulae for the degree $n$ part $Z_n$ of the Kontsevich-Kuperberg-Thurston universal finite type invariant of rational homology spheres. Each of these three formulae determines an alternate sum of the…
Bott--Cattaneo's theory defines the integral invariants for a framed rational homology 3-sphere equipped with an acyclic orthogonal local system, in terms of graph cocycles without self-loops. The 2-loop term of their invariants is…
Chern-Simons gauge theory, since its inception as a topological quantum field theory, has proved to be a rich source of understanding for knot invariants. In this work the theory is used to explore the definition of the expectation value of…
We use Khovanov-Rozansky gl(N) link homology to define invariants of oriented smooth 4-manifolds, as skein modules constructed from certain 4-categories with well-behaved duals. The technical heart of this construction is a proof of the…
This is the first in a series of papers exploring the relationship between the Rohlin invariant and gauge theory. We discuss the Casson-type invariant of a 3-manifold with the integral homology of a torus, given by counting projectively…
We construct an invariant of 3-manifolds using a modification of the Kontsevich integral and Kirby's calculus. This invariant, as expected in perturbative Chern-Simon theory, takes values in the algebra of oriented 3-valent graphs. This…
We obtain a localized version of the configuration space integral for the Casson knot invariant, where the standard symmetric Gauss form is replaced with a locally supported form. An interesting technical difference between the arguments…
In this thesis we study the Seiberg-Witten theory of an oriented homology 3-sphere. The goal is to extract topological invariants - the Seiberg-Witten invariants - by counting the solutions to the Seiberg-Witten equations on the manifold.…
We define a new invariant of links in the $3$-sphere and call it the parabolic Dijkgraaf-Witten (DW) invariant. This invariant is a generalization of the reduced DW invariant derived by Karuo. In this paper, we compute the invariant of…
New methods for computing a variety of gauge theoretic invariants for homology 3-spheres are developed. These invariants include the Chern-Simons invariants, the spectral flow of the odd signature operator, and the rho invariants of…
This article surveys our ongoing project about the relationship between invariants extending the classical Rohlin invariant of homology spheres and those coming from 4-dimensional (Yang-Mills) gauge theory. The main conjecture towards which…
In this paper we study isotopy classes of closed connected orientable surfaces in the standard $3$-sphere. Such a surface splits the $3$-sphere into two compact connected submanifolds, and by using their Heegaard splittings, we obtain a…
We consider an analogue of well-known Casson knot invariant for knotoids. We start with a direct analogue of the classical construction which gives two different integer-valued knotoid invariants and then focus on its homology extension.…
A link L in the 3-sphere is called Brunnian if every proper sublink of L is trivial. In a previous paper, the first author proved that the restriction to Brunnian links of any Goussarov-Vassiliev finite type invariant of (n+1)-component…
We introduce a multivariable Casson-Lin type invariant for links in $S^3$. This invariant is defined as a signed count of irreducible $\operatorname{SU}(2)$ representations of the link group with fixed meridional traces. For 2-component…
The Benard-Conway invariant of links in the 3-sphere is a Casson-Lin type invariant defined by counting irreducible SU(2) representations of the link group with fixed meridional traces. For two-component links with linking number one, the…
We define an invariant of transverse links in the standard contact 3-sphere as a distinguished element of the Khovanov homology of the link. The quantum grading of this invariant is the self-linking number of the link. For knots, this gives…