Alternating knots, planar graphs, and \(q\)-series (Q2017999)

Recently \(q\)-series were assigned to a knot \(K\) in a new way via stability of the coefficients of the colored Jones polynomial of \(K\). These \(q\)-series are given by generalized Nahm sums (special \(q\)-hypergeometric sums). The purpose of the paper under review is to provide a procedure to compute these \(q\)-series for alternating links. The computation is carried out for several terms of the series for all alternating links with at most \(8\) crossings. The results challenge the conjecture that such \(q\)-series can be identified with a finite product of unary theta or false theta series. Along the way, the paper provides a graph-theoretical proof of a theorem of Dasbach-Lin which identifies the coefficient of \(q^k\) in those series for \(k = 0, 1, 2,\) in terms of polynomials on the number of vertices, edges and triangles of the graph.