arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Michael Sullivan.
We define a coalgebra structure for open strings transverse to any framed codimension 2 submanifold. When the submanifold is a knot in R^3, we show this structure recovers a specialization of the Ng cord algebra, a non-trivial knot invariant which is not determined by a number of other knot invariants.
We construct a new invariant of transverse links in the standard contact structure on R^3. This invariant is a doubly filtered version of the knot contact homology differential graded algebra (DGA) of the link. Here the knot contact homology of a link in R^3 is the Legendrian contact homology DGA of its conormal lift into the unit cotangent bundle S^*R^3 of R^3, and the filtrations are constructed by counting intersections of the holomorphic disks of the DGA differential with two conormal lifts of the contact structure. We also present a combinatorial formula for the filtered DGA in terms of braid representatives of transverse links and apply it to show that the new invariant is independent of previously known invariants of transverse links.
The conormal lift of a link $K$ in $\R^3$ is a Legendrian submanifold $Λ_K$ in the unit cotangent bundle $U^* \R^3$ of $\R^3$ with contact structure equal to the kernel of the Liouville form. Knot contact homology, a topological link invariant of $K$, is defined as the Legendrian homology of $Λ_K$, the homology of a differential graded algebra generated by Reeb chords whose differential counts holomorphic disks in the symplectization $\R \times U^*\R^3$ with Lagrangian boundary condition $\R \times Λ_K$. We perform an explicit and complete computation of the Legendrian homology of $Λ_K$ for arbitrary links $K$ in terms of a braid presentation of $K$, confirming a conjecture that this invariant agrees with a previously-defined combinatorial version of knot contact homology. The computation uses a double degeneration: the braid degenerates toward a multiple cover of the unknot which in turn degenerates to a point. Under the first degeneration, holomorphic disks converge to gradient flow trees with quantum corrections. The combined degenerations give rise to a new generalization of flow trees called multiscale flow trees. The theory of multiscale flow trees is the key tool in our computation and is already proving to be useful for other computations as well.
The periodic Floer homology of a surface symplectomorphism, defined by the first author and M. Thaddeus, is the homology of a chain complex which is generated by certain unions of periodic orbits, and whose differential counts certain embedded pseudoholomorphic curves in R cross the mapping torus. It is conjectured to recover the Seiberg-Witten Floer homology of the mapping torus for most spin-c structures, and is related to a variant of contact homology. In this paper we compute the periodic Floer homology of some Dehn twists.