English

Khovanov complexes of rational tangles

Geometric Topology 2018-12-13 v2 Quantum Algebra

Abstract

We show that the Khovanov complex of a rational tangle has a very simple representative whose backbone of non-zero morphisms forms a zig-zag. Furthermore, this minimal complex can be computed quickly by an inductive algorithm. (For example, we calculate Kh(82)Kh(8_2) by hand.) We find that the bigradings of the subobjects in these minimal complexes can be described by matrix actions, which after a change of basis is the reduced Burau representation of B3B_3.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1701.07525,
  title  = {Khovanov complexes of rational tangles},
  author = {Benjamin Thompson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.07525},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

20 pages. Removed unnecessary exposition from the first version and updated some diagrams and references

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:00:40.784Z