Paper detail

Quantum Invariants of Links and 3-Manifolds with Boundary defined via Virtual Links: Calculation of some examples

In the prequel of this paper, Kauffman and Ogasa introduced new topological quantum invariants of compact oriented 3-manifolds with boundary where the boundary is a disjoint union of two identical surfaces. The invariants are constructed via surgery on manifolds of the form $F \times I$ where $I$ denotes the unit interval. Since virtual knots and links are represented as links in such thickened surfaces, we are able also to construct invariants in terms of virtual link diagrams (planar diagrams with virtual crossings). These invariants are new, nontrivial, and calculable examples of quantum invariants of 3-manifolds with non-vacuous boundary. Since virtual knots and links are represented by embeddings of circles in thickened surfaces, we refer to embeddings of circles in the 3-sphere as {\it classical links}. Classical links are the same as virtual links that can be represented in a thickened 2-sphere and it is a fact that classical links, up to isotopy, embed in the collection of virtual links taken up to isotopy. We give a new invariant of classical links in the 3-sphere in the following sense: Consider a link $L$ in $S^3$ of two components. The complement of a tubular neighborhood of $L$ is a manifold whose boundary consists in two copies of a torus. Our invariants apply to this case of bounded manifold and give new invariants of the given link of two components. Invariants of knots are also obtained. In this paper we calculate the topological quantum invariants of some examples explicitly. We conclude from our examples that our invariant is new and strong enough to distinguish some classical knots from one another. We also explain how different Our topological quantum invariants of 3-manifolds with boundary and the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants are. (See the body for detail).