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This is an introduction to the Volume Conjecture and its generalizations for nonexperts. The Volume Conjecture states that a certain limit of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot would give the volume of its complement. If we deform the parameter of the colored Jones polynomial we also conjecture that it would also give the volume and the Chern-Simons invariant of a three-manifold obtained by Dehn surgery determined by the parameter. I start with a definition of the colored Jones polynomial and include elementary examples and short description of elementary hyperbolic geometry., Comment: 39 pages, 37 figures, submitted to the proceedings of the workshop "Interactions Between Hyperbolic Geometry, Quantum Topology and Number Theory"

We show that for a torus knot the SL(2;C) Chern-Simons invariants and the SL(2;C) twisted Reidemeister torsions appear in an asymptotic expansion of the colored Jones polynomial. This suggests a generalization of the volume conjecture that relates the asymptotic behavior of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot to the volume of the knot complement., Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure, submitted to the Proceedings of the workshop "Chern-Simons Gauge Theory: 20 Years After"

We propose a version of the volume conjecture that would relate a certain limit of the colored Jones polynomials of a knot to the volume function defined by a representation of the fundamental group of the knot complement to the special linear group of degree two over complex numbers. We also confirm the conjecture for the figure-eight knot and torus knots. This version is different from S. Gukov's because of a choice of polarization., Comment: 5 pages, added more comments

This paper has been withdrawn by the author. The author found that the main results here were already obtained by K. Taniyama and A. Yasuhara `On $C$-distance of knots. Kobe J. Math. 11 (1994), no. 1, 117--127. MR1309997 (95j:57010)'. He would like to thank M. Ozawa for the information., Comment: This paper has been withdrawn

The volume conjecture and its generalization state that the series of certain evaluations of the colored Jones polynomials of a knot would grow exponentially and its growth rate would be related to the volume of a three-manifold obtained by Dehn surgery along the knot. In this paper, we show that for the figure-eight knot the series converges in some cases and the limit equals the inverse of its Alexander polynomial., Comment: 13 pages

We study the asymptotic behaviors of the colored Jones polynomials of torus knots. Contrary to the works by R. Kashaev, O. Tirkkonen, Y. Yokota, and the author, they do not seem to give the volumes or the Chern-Simons invariants of the three-manifolds obtained by Dehn surgeries. On the other hand it is proved that in some cases the limits give the inverse of the Alexander polynomial., Comment: 7 pages

We will study the asymptotic behaviors of the colored Jones polynomials of the figure-eight knot. In particular we will show that for certain limits we obtain the volumes of the cone manifolds with singularities along the knot., Comment: 11 pages

We show that the set of colored Jones polynomials and the set of generalized Alexander polynomials defined by Akutsu, Deguchi and Ohtsuki intersect non-trivially. Moreover it is shown that the intersection is (at least includes) the set of Kashaev's quantum dilogarithm invariants for links. Therefore Kashaev's conjecture can be restated as follows: The colored Jones polynomials determine the hyperbolic volume for a hyperbolic knot. Modifying this, we propose a stronger conjecture: The colored Jones polynomials determine the simplicial volume for any knot. If our conjecture is true, then we can prove that a knot is trivial if and only if all of its Vassiliev invariants are trivial., Comment: 18 pages. Added Remark 2.2 and improved Remark 5.7

A weight system is defined from the (multivariable) Conway potential function. We also show that it can be calculated recursively by using five axioms., Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, to appear in J. London Math. Soc

We define a filtration on the vector space spanned by Seifert matrices of knots related to Vassiliev's filtration on the space of knots. Further we show that the invariants of knots derived from the filtration can be expressed by coefficients of the Alexander polynomial., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, updated references

We show an integrality of the quantum SU(2)-invariant associated with a non-trivial first cohomology class modulo two., Comment: 6 pages, submitted to the proceedings of `Knots in Hellas 1998'