A complete knot invariant from contact homology (Q1702787): Difference between revisions

The study of smooth manifolds through the symplectic structures on their cotangent bundles is important in symplectic and contact topology. If \(K\subset\mathbb R^3\) is a knot, then its unit co-normal bundle, the co-normal torus \(\Lambda_K\), is a Legendrian submanifold of the contact co-sphere bundle \(ST^*\mathbb R^3\). Isotopic knots produce co-normal tori that are isotopic as Legendrian submanifolds, i.e., the Legendrian isotopy type of the co-normal torus is a knot invariant. The fact that this invariant is nontrivial depends essentially on the contact geometry. The Legendrian contact homology of \(\Lambda_K\), also known as the knot contact homology of \(K\), is an algebraic knot invariant associated to this geometric invariant. In this paper, the authors present an extension of knot contact homology by slightly enlarging the set of holomorphic disks that are counted. They show that this extension, which is called enhanced knot contact homology, contains the knot group along with the peripheral subgroup, and this in turn is enough to completely determine the knot. The enhancement consists of the Legendrian contact homology associated to the union of the co-normal torus of the knot and a disjoint cotangent fiber sphere, along with a product on a filtered part of this homology. The authors use the Legendrian contact homology of not just \(\Lambda_K\) but the union of \(\Lambda_K\) and a cotangent fiber \(\Lambda_p\) of \(ST^*\mathbb R^3\), where \(p\in \mathbb R^3\) and the inclusion of \(\Lambda_p\) is analogous to choosing a basepoint for the fundamental group. This new invariant, \(\text{LCH}_*(\Lambda_K\cup\Lambda_p)\) is a ring that contains the knot contact homology of \(K\) as a quotient. If \((\text{LCH}_*)_{\Lambda_i,\Lambda_j}\) denotes the homology of the subcomplex generated by composable words of Reeb chords ending on \(\Lambda_i\) and beginning on \(\Lambda_j\), then \(\text{LCH}_*(\Lambda_K\cup\Lambda_p)\cong(\text{LCH}_*)_{\Lambda_K,\Lambda_K}\oplus(\text{LCH}_*)_{\Lambda_K,\Lambda_p}\oplus(\text{LCH}_*)_{\Lambda_p,\Lambda_K}\oplus(\text{LCH}_*)_{\Lambda_p,\Lambda_p}\). From this data, the authors select the KCH-triple \((R_{KK}, R{Kp}, R_{pK})\) associated to \(\Lambda_K\cup\Lambda_p\) defined by \(R_{KK}=(\text{LCH}_0)_{\Lambda_K,\Lambda_K}\), \(R_{Kp}=(\text{LCH}_0)_{\Lambda_K,\Lambda_p}\), \(R_{pK}=(\text{LCH}_1)_{\Lambda_p,\Lambda_K}\). The homology \(R_{KK}\) is precisely the degree \(0\) knot contact homology of \(K\) and contains a subring \(\mathbb Z[l^{\pm 1},m^{\pm1}]\), where \(l\) and \(m\) are the longitude and meridian of \(K\). \(R{Kp}\) and \(R_{pK}\) are left and right modules, respectively, over \(R_{KK}\). The authors prove that if \(K\subset\mathbb R^3\) is an oriented knot, \(p\in\mathbb R^3\setminus K\) is a point, and \(\Lambda_K\), \(\Lambda_p\) are the Legendrian submanifolds of \(ST^*\mathbb R^3\), then the KCH-triple \((R_{KK}, R{Kp}, R_{pK})\) equipped with the product \(\mu:R_{Kp}\otimes R_{pK}\to R_{KK}\) is a complete invariant for \(K\).