English

Link Floer homology categorifies the Conway function

Geometric Topology 2016-10-27 v2

Abstract

Given an oriented link in the 3-sphere, the Euler characteristic of its link Floer homology is known to coincide with its multivariate Alexander polynomial, an invariant only defined up to a sign and powers of the variables. In this paper, we get rid of this ambiguity by proving that this Euler characteristic is equal to the so-called Conway function, the representative of the multivariate Alexander polynomial introduced by Conway in 1970 and explicitly constructed by Hartley in 1983. This is achieved by creating a model of the Conway function adapted to rectangular diagrams, which is then compared to the Euler characteristic of the combinatorial version of link Floer homology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1408.3517,
  title  = {Link Floer homology categorifies the Conway function},
  author = {Mounir Benheddi and David Cimasoni},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.3517},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

20 pages, many figures; final version to appear in Proc. Edinburgh Math. Soc

R2 v1 2026-06-22T05:29:55.744Z