Related papers: An Introduction to the Volume Conjecture
We report the results of our empirical investigations on the Bateman-Horn conjecture. This conjecture, in its commonly known form, produces rather large deviations when the polynomials involved are not monic. We propose a modified version…
Solutions to both the diffeomorphism and the hamiltonian constraint of quantum gravity have been found in the loop representation, which is based on Ashtekar's new variables. While the diffeomorphism constraint is easily solved by…
The "color" in the colored Jones polynomial is an integer parameter. In this paper, a periodic pattern of the values of the colored Jones polynomial at the second and the third roots of unity is found. If we substitute -1 to the colored…
We give a volume formula of hyperbolic knot complements using twisted Alexander invariants.
We show that the cusp volume of a hyperbolic alternating knot can be bounded above and below in terms of the twist number of an alternating diagram of the knot. This leads to diagrammatic estimates on lengths of slopes, and has some…
The longstanding Godbersen's conjecture states that for any convex body $K \subset \mathbb R^n$ of volume $1$ and any $j \in \{0, \ldots, n\}$, the mixed volume $V_j = V(K[j], -K[n - j])$ is bounded by $\binom{n}{j}$, with equality if and…
In previous joint work with Frohman and Lofaro a noncommutative generalization of the A-polynomial of a knot was introduced, consisting of a finitely generated ideal of polynomials (the noncommutative A-ideal) in the quantum plane. The…
Let $K$ be a $d$ dimensional convex body with a twice continuously differentiable boundary and everywhere positive Gauss-Kronecker curvature. Denote by $K_n$ the convex hull of $n$ points chosen randomly and independently from $K$ according…
These notes are designed to offer some (perhaps new) codicils to related work, a list of problems and conjectures seeking (preferably) combinatorial proofs. The main items are Eulerian polynomials and hook/contents of Young diagram, mostly…
We explore some inequalities in convex geometry restricted to the class of zonoids. We show the equivalence, in the class of zonoids, between a local Alexandrov-Fenchel inequality, a local Loomis-Whitney inequality, the log-submodularity of…
The "Mahler volume" is, intuitively speaking, a measure of how "round" a centrally symmetric convex body is. In one direction this intuition is given weight by a result of Santalo, who in the 1940s showed that the Mahler volume is…
We investigate the conjectural relations between the Reshetikhin-Turaev-Witten quantum SU(2) invariants and the volume of hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Given a finite set of sufficiently large positive integers, say J, we construct examples of…
Let K be a knot in S^3, and M and M' be distinct Dehn surgeries along K. We investigate when M covers M'. When K is a torus knot, we provide a complete classification of such covers. When K is a hyperbolic knot, we provide partial results…
Let $M$ be a compact oriented three-manifold whose interior is hyperbolic of finite volume. We prove a variation formula for the volume on the variety of representations of $M$ in $\operatorname{SL}_n(\mathbb C)$. Our proof follows the…
In the first of these two lectures, I use a comparison to symplectic Khovanov homology to motivate the idea that the Jones polynomial and Khovanov homology of knots can be defined by counting the solutions of certain elliptic partial…
The Jacobian Conjecture states that any locally invertible polynomial system in C^n is globally invertible with polynomial inverse. C. W. Bass et al. (1982) proved a reduction theorem stating that the conjecture is true for any degree of…
The work of Jorgensen and Thurston shows that there is a finite number N(v) of orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds with any given volume v. We show that there is an infinite sequence of closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds, obtained by…
The colored Jones polynomial of links has two natural normalizations: one in which the n-colored unknot evaluates to [n+1], the quantum dimension of the (n+1)-dimensional irreducible representation of quantum sl(2), and the other in which…
In this paper, we show that the volumes for a family of A-adequate closed braids can be bounded above and below in terms of the twist number, the number of braid strings, and a quantity that can be read from the combinatorics of a given…
Estimating the volume of a convex body is a canonical problem in theoretical computer science. Its study has led to major advances in randomized algorithms, Markov chain theory, and computational geometry. In particular, determining the…