Monomial reduction of knot polynomials

Abstract

For all natural numbers $N$ and prime numbers $p$, we find a knot $K$ whose skein polynomial $P_K(a,z)$ evaluated at $z=N$ has trivial reduction modulo $p$. An interesting consequence of our construction is that all polynomials $P_K(a,N)$ (mod~$p$) with bounded $a$-span are realised by knots with bounded braid index. As an application, we classify all polynomials of the form $P_K(a,1)$ (mod $2$) with $a$-span $\leq 10$.