Knot Groups Annals Of Mathematics Studies Am 56 Volume 56

The description for this book, Knot Groups. Annals of Mathematics Studies. (AM-56), Volume 56, will be forthcoming.

The description for this book, Knot Groups. Annals of Mathematics Studies. (AM-56), Volume 56, will be forthcoming.

In this paper a family of closed oriented 3 dimensional manifolds {[italic]M[subscript italic]n([italic]k,[italic]h)} is constructed by pasting together pairs of regions on the boundary of a 3 ball. The manifold [italic]M[subscript italic]n([italic]k,[italic]h) is a generalization of the lens space [italic]L([italic]n,1) and is closely related to the 2 bridge knot or link of type ([italic]k,[italic]h). While the work is basically geometrical, examination of [lowercase Greek]Pi1([italic]M[subscript italic]n([italic]k,[italic]h)) leads naturally to the study of "cyclic" presentations of groups. Abelianizing these presentations gives rise to a formula for the Alexander polynomials of 2 bridge knots and to a description of [italic]H1([italic]M[subscript italic]n([italic]k,[italic]h), [italic]Z) by means of circulant matrices whose entries are the coefficients of these polynomials.

This book consists of 16 surveys on Thurston's work and its later development. The authors are mathematicians who were strongly influenced by Thurston's publications and ideas. The subjects discussed include, among others, knot theory, the topology of 3-manifolds, circle packings, complex projective structures, hyperbolic geometry, Kleinian groups, foliations, mapping class groups, Teichmüller theory, anti-de Sitter geometry, and co-Minkowski geometry. The book is addressed to researchers and students who want to learn about Thurston’s wide-ranging mathematical ideas and their impact. At the same time, it is a tribute to Thurston, one of the greatest geometers of all time, whose work extended over many fields in mathematics and who had a unique way of perceiving forms and patterns, and of communicating and writing mathematics.

The volume conjecture states that a certain limit of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot in the three-dimensional sphere would give the volume of the knot complement. Here the colored Jones polynomial is a generalization of the celebrated Jones polynomial and is defined by using a so-called R-matrix that is associated with the N-dimensional representation of the Lie algebra sl(2;C). The volume conjecture was first stated by R. Kashaev in terms of his own invariant defined by using the quantum dilogarithm. Later H. Murakami and J. Murakami proved that Kashaev’s invariant is nothing but the N-dimensional colored Jones polynomial evaluated at the Nth root of unity. Then the volume conjecture turns out to be a conjecture that relates an algebraic object, the colored Jones polynomial, with a geometric object, the volume. In this book we start with the definition of the colored Jones polynomial by using braid presentations of knots. Then we state the volume conjecture and give a very elementary proof of the conjecture for the figure-eight knot following T. Ekholm. We then give a rough idea of the “proof”, that is, we show why we think the conjecture is true at least in the case of hyperbolic knots by showing how the summation formula for the colored Jones polynomial “looks like” the hyperbolicity equations of the knot complement. We also describe a generalization of the volume conjecture that corresponds to a deformation of the complete hyperbolic structure of a knot complement. This generalization would relate the colored Jones polynomial of a knot to the volume and the Chern–Simons invariant of a certain representation of the fundamental group of the knot complement to the Lie group SL(2;C). We finish by mentioning further generalizations of the volume conjecture.

The present volume is an updated version of the book edited by C N Yang and M L Ge on the topics of braid groups and knot theory, which are related to statistical mechanics. This book is based on the 1989 volume but has new material included and new contributors. Contents:On the Combinatorics of Vassiliev Invariants (J S Birman)Solvable Methods, Link Invariants and Their Applications to Physics (T Deguchi & M Wadati)Quantum Symmetry in Conformal Field Theory by Hamiltonian Methods (L D Faddeev)Yang-Baxterization & Algebraic Structures (M L Ge, K Xue, Y S Wu)Spin Networks, Topology and Discrete Physics (L H Kauffman)Tunnel Numbers of Knots and Jones-Witten Invariants (T Kohno)Knot Invariants and Statistical Mechanics: A Physicist's Perspective (F Y Wu)and other papers Readership: Mathematical physicists. keywords:Braid Group;Knot Theory;Statistical Mechanics “It has been four years since the publication in 1989 of the previous volume bearing the same title as the present one. Enormous amounts of work have been done in the meantime. We hope the present volume will provide a summary of some of these works which are still progressing in several directions.” from the foreword by C N Yang