Twisted knot polynomials: inversion, mutation and concordance (Q1292689)

This is the second of two papers in which the authors study twisted Alexander invariants. For the first see the review above. Here the authors give applications to three areas of knot theory; invertibility of knots, mutation and concordance. They make explicit computations for twisted invariants of the knot \(8_{17}\) which allow them to show its non-invertibility, and they comment on the relation of these computations with \textit{R. Hartley}'s non-invertibility proof [ibid. 22, 137-145 (1983; Zbl 0512.57002)]. They then show how the invariants can sometimes make the delicate decision as to whether a knot and its inverse are even concordant, and they illustrate this by proving that \(8_{17}\) and its inverse are not concordant. Finally they show that even `positive' mutants, (those in which the string orientations of the constituent tangles are not reversed by the mutation), need not be concordant, by explicit calculation of twisted invariants for two mutant pretzel knots. In view of the questions about the possibility of detecting invertibility by finite-type invariants the authors draw attention to their calculations for \(8_{17}\); it would be interesting to find out more about the twisted invariants when written for example as power series.