On computational complexity of Khovanov homology

Tuomas Kelomäki; Dirk Schütz

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arXiv · 2601.02119

On computational complexity of Khovanov homology

Tuomas Kelomäki·Dirk Schütz

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Abstract

Computing the Jones polynomial of general link diagrams is known to be $\#$P-hard, while restricting the computation to braid closures on fixed number of strands allows for a polynomial time algorithm. We investigate polynomial time algorithms for Khovanov homology of braids and show that for $3$-braids there is one. In contrast, we show that Bar-Natan's scanning algorithm runs in exponential time when restricted to simple classes of $3$-braids. For more general braids, we obtain that a variation of the scanning algorithm computes the Khovanov homology for a bounded set of homological degrees in polynomial time. We also prove upper and lower bounds on the ranks of Khovanov homology groups.

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Tuomas Kelomäki, Dirk Schütz. 2026-01-05. On computational complexity of Khovanov homology. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02119

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