Related papers: Vassiliev Invariants and the Loop States in Quantu…

This paper is an exposition of the relationship between Witten's Chern-Simons functional integral and the theory of Vassiliev Invariants of knots and links in three dimensional space. We conceptualize the functional integral in terms of…

We consider a special class of Kauffman's graph invariants of rigid vertex isotopy (graph invariants of Vassiliev type). They are given by a functor from a category of colored and oriented graphs embedded into a 3-space to a category of…

We analyse the perturbative series expansion of the vacuum expectation value of a Wilson loop in Chern-Simons gauge theory in the temporal gauge. From the analysis emerges the notion of the kernel of a Vassiliev invariant. The kernel of a…

The "fundamental theorem of Vassiliev invariants" says that every weight system can be integrated to a knot invariant. We discuss four different approaches to the proof of this theorem: a topological/combinatorial approach following M.…

The general structure of the perturbative expansion of the vacuum expectation value of a product of Wilson-loop operators is analyzed in the context of Chern-Simons gauge theory. Wilson loops are opened into Wilson lines in order to unravel…

We discuss Vassiliev invariants for virtual knots, expanding upon the theory of quantum virtual knot invariants developed in arXiv:1509.00578. In particular, following the theory of quantum invariants we work with 'rotational' virtual…

We show that Vassiliev invariants of knots, appropriately generalized to the spin network context, are loop differentiable in spite of being diffeomorphism invariant. This opens the possibility of defining rigorously the constraints of…

We summarize the progress made during the last few years on the study of Vassiliev invariants from the point of view of perturbative Chern-Simons gauge theory. We argue that this approach is the most promising one to obtain a combinatorial…

We generalize the idea of Vassiliev invariants to the spin network context, with the aim of using these invariants as a kinematical arena for a canonical quantization of gravity. This paper presents a detailed construction of these…

We analyse the structure of the perturbative series expansion of Chern-Simons gauge theory in the light-cone gauge. After introducing a regularization prescription that entails the consideration of framed knots, we present the general form…

This paper is an exposition of heuristics related to Witten's functional integral, relating it to Vassiliev invariants and to the Kontsevich integrals that can be used to produce Vassiliev invariants of knots and links.In particular, we…

We present an implementation of the loop representation of quantum gravity on a square lattice. Instead of starting from a classical lattice theory, quantizing and introducing loops, we proceed backwards, setting up constraints in the…

The Vassiliev-Gusarov link invariants of finite type are known to be closely related to perturbation theory for Chern-Simons theory. In order to clarify the perturbative nature of such link invariants, we introduce an algebra V_infinity…

The expectation value of a Wilson loop in a Chern--Simons theory is a knot invariant. Its skein relations have been derived in a variety of ways, including variational methods in which small deformations of the loop are made and the changes…

It has been folklore for several years in the knot theory community that certain integrals on configuration space, originally motivated by perturbation theory for the Chern-Simons field theory, converge and yield knot invariants. This was…

The general structure of the perturbative expansion of the vacuum expectation value of a Wilson line operator in Chern-Simons gauge field theory is analyzed. The expansion is organized according to the independent group structures that…

The perturbative expansion of Chern-Simons gauge theory leads to invariants of knots and links, the finite type invariants or Vassiliev invariants. It has been proven that at any order in perturbation theory the resulting expression is an…

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…

At any order, the perturbative expansion of the expectation values of Wilson lines in Chern-Simons theory gives certain integral expressions. We show that they all lead to knot invariants. Moreover these are finite type invariants whose…

We prove a refinement of Vogel's statement that the Vassiliev invariants of knots coming from semisimple Lie algebras do not generate all Vassiliev invariants. This refinement takes into account the second grading on Vassiliev invariants…