Related papers: An elementary fact about unlinked braid closures
Positive permutation braids on n strings, which are defined to be positive n-braids where each pair of strings crosses at most once, form the elementary but non-trivial building blocks in many studies of conjugacy in the braid groups. We…
A conjecture of Shumakovitch states that every nontrivial knot has 2-torsion in its Khovanov homology. We show that if a knot $K$ has no 2-torsion in its Khovanov homology, then the rank of its reduced Khovanov homology is minimal among all…
We prove that if n\ge1, then an (n+1)-component Brunnian link L in a connected, oriented 3-manifold is C_n-equivalent to an unlink. We also prove that if n\ge2, then L can not be distinguished from an unlink by any Goussarov-Vassiliev…
In this thesis we work with Khovanov homology of links and its generalizations, as well as with the homology of graphs. Khovanov homology of links consists of graded chain complexes which are link invariants, up to chain homotopy, with…
Computing the Jones polynomial of general link diagrams is known to be $\#$P-hard, while restricting the computation to braid closures on fixed number of strands allows for a polynomial time algorithm. We investigate polynomial time…
Our main result has topological, combinatorial and computational flavor. It is motivated by a fundamental conjecture stating that computing Khovanov homology of a closed braid of fixed number of strands has polynomial time complexity. We…
We prove that the Khovanov homology of alternating knots and 2-component links is equal (as a singly graded group) to the singular homology of a certain space of trace- free, binary dihedral representations of the link group. More…
An elementary introduction to Khovanov construction of superpolynomials. Despite its technical complexity, this method remains the only source of a definition of superpolynomials from the first principles and therefore is important for…
If L_1 and L_2 are two Brunnian links with all pairwise linking numbers 0, then we show that L_1 and L_2 are equivalent if and only if they have homeomorphic complements. In particular, this holds for all Brunnian links with at least three…
In the first part of the Thesis, we reformulate the Murakami-Ohtsuki-Yamada state-sum description of the level n Jones polynomial of an oriented link in terms of a suitable braided monoidal category whose morphisms are Q[q, q-1] s-linear…
In "Homfly polynomial via an invariant of colored plane graphs", Murakami, Ohtsuki, and Yamada provide a state-sum description of the level $n$ Jones polynomial of an oriented link in terms of a suitable braided monoidal category whose…
For every positive integer $n$ we construct a bigraded homology theory for links, such that the corresponding invariant of the unknot is closely related to the U(n)-equivariant cohomology ring of $\mathbb{CP}^{n-1}$; our construction…
We prove that a knot is the unknot if and only if its reduced Khovanov cohomology has rank 1. The proof has two steps. We show first that there is a spectral sequence beginning with the reduced Khovanov cohomology and abutting to a knot…
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…
Traditionally, knot theorists have considered projections of knots where there are two strands meeting at every crossing. A multi-crossing is a crossing where more than two strands meet at a single point, such that each strand bisects the…
If G is a finite graph and n is a natural number, then the n-strand braid group of G is the fundamental group of the configuration space of n points on G. This article gives a complete computation of the integral cohomology rings of the…
A generalization of the topological fundamental group is developed in order to exhibit a topologically complete braid group containing Artin's braid group on infinitely many strands with respect to the following notion of convergence: A…
Let $M$ be a closed, oriented, connected 3--manifold and $(B,\pi)$ an open book decomposition on $M$ with page $\Sigma$ and monodromy $\varphi$. It is easy to see that the first Betti number of $\Sigma$ is bounded below by the number of…
We establish an isomorphism between the Khovanov-Rozansky triply graded link homology and the geometric triply graded homology due to the authors. Hence we provide an interpretation of the Khovanov-Rozansky homology of the closure of a…
We prove that the Khovanov-Lee complex of an oriented link, L, in a thickened annulus, A x I, has the structure of a bifiltered complex whose filtered chain homotopy type is an invariant of the isotopy class of L in A x I. Using ideas of…