Related papers: Twisted Alexander polynomials of Plane Algebraic C…
Fox's conjecture from 1962, that the absolute values of the coefficients of the Alexander polynomial of an alternating link are trapezoidal, has remained stubbornly open to this date. Recently Fox's conjecture was settled for all special…
The traditional study of plane and space algebraic curves by looking at their tangent vectors, curvatures and torsions provides geometric, but unfortunately not sufficient information about individual curves in order to be able to…
A twisting system is one of the major tools to study graded algebras, however, it is often difficult to construct a (non-algebraic) twisting system if a graded algebra is given by generators and relations. In this paper, we show that a…
Given a knot complement X and its p-fold cyclic cover X_p, we identify twisted polynomials associated to 1-dimensional linear representations of the fundamental group of X_p with twisted polynomials associated to related p-dimensional…
We study a twisted Alexander polynomial naturally associated to a hyperbolic knot in an integer homology 3-sphere via a lift of the holonomy representation to SL(2, C). It is an unambiguous symmetric Laurent polynomial whose coefficients…
We develop a diagrammatic calculus for representations of unrolled quantum $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ at a fourth root of unity. This allows us to prove Seifert-Torres type formulas for certain splice links using quantum algebraic methods, rather…
We observe the twisted Alexander polynomial for metabelian representations of knot groups into SL(2,C) and study relations to the characterizations of metabelian representations in the character varieties. We give a factorization of the…
For a fibered knot in the 3-sphere the twisted Alexander polynomial associated to an SL(2,C)-character is known to be monic. It is conjectured that for a nonfibered knot there is a curve component of the SL(2,C)-character variety containing…
The purpose of this paper is two-fold. We first prove a series of results, concerned with the notion of Zariski multiplicity, mainly for non-singular algebraic curves. These results are required in the paper "A Theory of Branches for…
For any knot, the following are equivalent. (1) The infinite cyclic cover has uncountably many finite covers; (2) there exists a finite-image representation of the knot group for which the twisted Alexander polynomial vanishes; (3) the knot…
We develop a dimer model for the Alexander polynomial of a knot. This recovers Kauffman's state sum model for the Alexander polynomial using the language of dimers. By providing some additional structure we are able to extend this model to…
In this paper we present a sequence of link invariants, defined from twisted Alexander polynomials, and discuss their effectiveness in distinguish knots. In particular, we recast and extend by geometric means a recent result of Silver and…
Inspired by the combinatorial constructions in earlier work of the authors that generalized the classical Alexander polynomial to a large class of spatial graphs with a balanced weight on edges, we show that the value of the Alexander…
Let $H(p)$ be the set of 2-bridge knots $K$ whose group $G$ is mapped onto a non-trivial free product, $Z/2 * Z/p$, $p$ being odd. Then there is an algebraic integer $s_0$ such that for any $K$ in $H(p)$, $G$ has a parabolic representation…
We formulate a refined theory of linear systems, using the methods of a previous paper, "A Theory of Branches for Algebraic Curves", and use it to give a geometric interpretation of the genus of an algebraic curve. Using principles of…
We complete the enumeration of the possible roots of the Alexander polynomial (both conventional and over finite fields) of a trigonal curve. The curves are not assumed proper or irreducible.
We prove that the Alexander polynomials of certain families of alternating 4-braid knots satisfy Fox's Trapezoidal Conjecture. Moreover, we give explicit formulas for the signature and for the first 4 coefficients of the Alexander…
For arborescent links, we present an efficient method of computing their Alexander polynomials. Applying this method, we express the Alexander polynomials of Montesinos links in terms of certain functions associated to rational tangles…
We consider spaces of plane curves in the setting of algebraic geometry and of singularity theory. On one hand there are the complete linear systems, on the other we consider unfolding spaces of bivariate polynomials of Brieskorn-Pham type.…
Properties of the Alexander polynomials of Hurwitz curves are investigated. A complete description of the set of the Alexander polynomials of irreducible Hurwitz curves in the terms of their roots is given.