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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 |
Description
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.