A homological definition of the HOMFLY polynomial

Stephen Bigelow

doi:10.2140/agt.2007.7.1409

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A homological definition of the HOMFLY polynomial

Stephen Bigelow

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Abstract

We give a new definition of the knot invariant associated to the Lie algebra su_{N+1}. The knot or link must be presented as the plat closure of a braid. The invariant is then a homological intersection pairing between two submanifolds of a configuration space of points in a disk. This generalizes previous work on the Jones polynomial, which is the case N=1.

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Stephen Bigelow. 2006-08-21. A homological definition of the HOMFLY polynomial. https://doi.org/10.2140/agt.2007.7.1409

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