Related papers: Alexander invariants of ribbon tangles and planar …

A tangle is an oriented 1-submanifold of the cylinder whose endpoints lie on the two disks in the boundary of the cylinder. Using an algebraic tool developed by Lescop, we extend the Burau representation of braids to a functor from the…

This paper reinterprets Alexander-type invariants of knots via representation varieties of knot groups into the group $\textrm{AGL}_1(\mathbb{C})$ of affine transformations of the complex line. In particular, we prove that the coordinate…

Let $R$ be an integral domain and $G$ be a subgroup of its group of units. We consider the category $\mathbf{\mathsf{Cob}}_G$ of 3-dimensional cobordisms between oriented surfaces with connected boundary, equipped with a representation of…

In these notes we collect some results about finite dimensional representations of $U_q(\mathfrak{gl}(1|1))$ and related invariants of framed tangles which are well-known to experts but difficult to find in the literature. In particular, we…

Let $\mathbb{F}$ be a field and let $G\subset \mathbb{F}\setminus \{0\}$ be a multiplicative subgroup. We consider the category $\mathcal{Cob}_G$ of $3$-dimensional cobordisms equipped with a representation of their fundamental group in…

The classical abelian invariants of a knot are the Alexander module, which is the first homology group of the the unique infinite cyclic covering space of S^3-K, considered as a module over the (commutative) Laurent polynomial ring, and the…

We study generalizations of a classical link invariant -- the multivariable Alexander polynomial -- to tangles. The starting point is Archibald's tMVA invariant for virtual tangles which lives in the setting of circuit algebras, and whose…

Recently, Bigelow defined a diagrammatic method for calculating the Alexander polynomial of a knot or link by resolving crossings in a planar algebra. I will present my multivariate version of Bigelow's calculation. The advantage to my…

In this paper we introduce an algebraic structure known as meta-monoids which is particularly suited for the study of knot theory. We define a meta-monoid called $\Gamma$-calculus that gives an Alexander invariant of tangles. We believe…

We introduce a new invariant of tangles along with an algebraic framework in which to understand it. We claim that the invariant contains the classical Alexander polynomial of knots and its multivariable extension to links. We argue that of…

Let A be an arrangement of complex hyperplanes. The fundamental group of the complement of A is determined by a braid monodromy homomorphism from a finitely generated free group to the pure braid group. Using the Gassner representation of…

In the 1920's Artin defined the braid group in an attempt to understand knots in a more algebraic setting. A braid is a certain arrangement of strings in three-dimensional space. It is a celebrated theorem of Alexander that every knot is…

We study the topology of the boundary manifold of a line arrangement in CP^2, with emphasis on the fundamental group G and associated invariants. We determine the Alexander polynomial Delta(G), and more generally, the twisted Alexander…

We construct a weak 2-functor from the bicategory of oriented tangles to a bicategory of Lagrangian cospans. This functor simultaneously extends the Burau representation of the braid groups, its generalization to tangles due to Turaev and…

The universal invariant with respect to a given ribbon Hopf algebra is a tangle invariant that dominates all the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants built from the representation theory of the algebra. We construct a canonical strict monoidal…

We give a new construction of the one-variable Alexander polynomial of an oriented knot or link, and show that it generalizes to a vector valued invariant of oriented tangles.

Homologically fibered knots are knots whose exteriors satisfy the same homological conditions as fibered knots. In our previous paper, we observed that for such a knot, higher-order Alexander invariants defined by Cochran, Harvey and Friedl…

A bottom tangle is a tangle in a cube consisting only of arc components, each of which has the two endpoints on the bottom line of the cube, placed next to each other. We introduce a subcategory B of the category of framed, oriented…

We find that Alexander polynomial of a ribbon knot in $ \mathbb{Z}HS^3 $ is determined by the intrinsic singularity information of its ribbon, and give a formula to calculate Alexander polynomial of a ribbon knot by that. We define half…

Let $Y_-$ and $Y_+$ be two compact 3-manifolds with empty or toroidal boundary. A 4-dimensional ribbon homology cobordism is a homologically trivial cobordism built with 1-handles and 2-handles. In this note, following the work of Friedl…