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The volume conjecture
Special Events| Speaker: | Karl Hallowell, UC Davis |
| Location: | 3106 MSB |
| Start time: | Wed, May 30 2007, 11:00AM |
In 1995, R. M. Kashaev conjectured that certain integer-indexed link invariants of a knot grew asymptotically as an exponential function of the index times the volume of the knot complement in the 3-sphere. Murakami and Murakami showed in 1999 that these link invariants were actually specializations of the colored Jones polynomial. This elaboration is now known as the "Volume conjecture". My talk will discuss the current state of the conjecture and a generalization due to Sergei Gukov that hypothesizes new relations between a 3-dimensional Chern-Simons theory and the colored Jones polynomial.