Knot and braid invariants from contact homology. I (Q2388858)

New knot and braid conjugacy class invariants are introduced in this interesting paper. The invariants are the homology groups of certain differential graded algebras. Particular attention is paid to the 0-dimensional homology group which is relatively easy to compute and can be related to classical knot invariants. For example, for 2-bridge knots it depends only on the Alexander Polynomial evaluated at \(-1\). Many pairs of knots, indistinguishable by extant polynomials (Alexander, Jones, HOMFLY, Kaufmann) or signature, or Khovanov invariant or Ozsváth-Szabó invariant are distinguished by these 0-dimensional homology groups. The invariants derive from certain representations of the braid group in the automorphism group of a free tensor algebra. There are strong connections of the invariants to the relative contact homology of certain Legendrian tori in 5-dimensional contact manifolds. For Part II see [\textit{L. Ng}, Geom. Topol. 9, 1603--1637 (2005; Zbl 1112.57001)].