Search

Gram determinants earned traction among knot theorists after E. Witten's presumption about the existence of a 3-manifold invariant connected to the Jones polynomial. Triggered by the creation of such an invariant by N. Reshetikhin and V. Turaev, several mathematicians have explored this line of research ever since. Gram determinants came into play by W. B. Raymond Lickorish's skein theoretic approach to the invariant. The construction of different bilinear forms is possible through changes in the ambient surface of the Kauffman bracket skein module. Hence, different types of Gram determinants have arisen in knot theory throughout the years; some of these determinants are discussed here. In this article, we introduce a new version of such a determinant from the M\"obius band and prove some important results about its structure. In particular, we explore its connection to the annulus case and factors of its closed formula., Comment: 15 pages, comments welcomed

The Jones-Wenzl idempotent plays a vital role in quantum invariants of $3$-manifolds and the colored Jones polynomial; it also serves as a useful tool for simplifying computations and proving theorems in knot theory. The relative Kauffman bracket skein module (RKBSM) for surface $I$-bundles and manifolds with marked boundaries have a well understood algebraic structure due to the work of J. H. Przytycki and T. T. Q. L\^e. It has been well documented that the RKBSM of the $I$-bundle of the annulus and the twisted $I$-bundle over the M\"obius band have distinct algebraic structures coming from the $I$-bundle structures. This paper serves as an introduction to studying the trace of Jones-Wenzl idempotents in the Kauffman bracket skein module (KBSM) of the twisted $I$-bundle of unorientable surfaces. We will give various results on Jones-Wenzl idempotents in the KBSM of the twisted $I$-bundle over the M\"obius band when it is closed through the crosscap of the M\"obius band. We will also uncover analog properties of Jones-Wenzl idempotents in the KBSM of the twisted $I$-bundle over the M\"obius band with the preservation of the $I$-bundle structure that differ from the KBSM of $Ann \times I$., Comment: 20 pages, comments welcomed

A lower bound of the Gordian distance is presented in terms of the Blanchfield pairing. Our approach, in particular, allows us to show at least for 195 pairs of unoriented nontrivial prime knots with up to 10 crossings that their Gordian distance is equal to 3, most of which are difficult to treat otherwise., Comment: 20 pages. Version 2 also includes computational results for composite knots