The degree of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, October 11, 2010 - 3:05pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Stavros Garoufalidis – Georgia Tech – stavros@math.gatech.edu – http://www.math.gatech.edu/~stavros
Organizer
Stavros Garoufalidis
Given a knot, a simple Lie algebra L and an irreducible representation V of L one can construct a one-variable polynomial with integer coefficients. When L is the simplest simple Lie algebra (sl_2) this gives a sequence of polynomials, whose sequence of degrees is a quadratic quasi-polynomial. We will discuss a conjecture for the degree of the colored Jones polynomial for an arbitrary simple Lie algebra, and we will give evidence for sl_3. This is joint work with Thao Vuong.