Cars, Interchanges, Traffic Counters, and some Pretty Darned Good Knot Invariants

McMaster University Geometry and Topology Seminar, January 18, 2024.

Following a talk given in Nara in August 2023

Abstract. Reporting on joint work with Roland van der Veen, I'll tell you some stories about $\rho_1$, an easy to define, strong, fast to compute, homomorphic, and well-connected knot invariant. $\rho_1$ was first studied by Rozansky and Overbay, it is dominated by the coloured Jones polynomial (but it isn't lesser!), it has far-reaching generalizations, and I wish I understood it.

URL: http://drorbn.net/mc24.

Links: AKT ap APAI AQDW DoPeGDO Dogma FDA Ov Scha SolvApp

Handout: Cars.html, Cars.pdf.

Talk Video (for the version given in Oaxaca; also at YouTube and at @BIRS).

After-talk writeup (for the version given in Nara): NaraTalkSummary.pdf.

Sources: pensieve.