Quantum Topology Seminar
Louis H Kauffman
UIC
Clocks and Trees
Abstract: This will be an informal talk about how spanning trees in the checkerboard graph of a knot or link diagram solve a riddle of Lewis Carroll on the one hand, and how they
are related to the Alexander, Alexander-Conway and Jones polynomials on the other hand. We will discuss the Clock Theorem and how it enables a proof that the number of spanning trees of the checkerboard graph of an alternating diagram is an invariant of the knot. This talk is intended to be background for the next talk which will be an exposition of the paper by Kriz and Kriz entitled “A spanning tree cohomology theory for links.”.
Thursday February 23, 2023 at 12:00 PM in Zoom