Tensor products of quandles and 1-handles attached to surface-links (Q820663)

A quandle is a set \(X\) equipped with two binary operations \(*\) and \(\overline{*}\) satisfying certain conditions related to Reidemeister moves in knot theory. A symmetric quandle is a pair \((X, \rho)\) of a quandle \(X\) and a certain involution \(\rho\) on \(X\) called a good involution. For a quandle \(X\), the symmetric double of \(X\) is a symmetric quandle \((D(X), \rho)\) such that \(D(X)=X \amalg X\) with binary operations determined from those of \(X\), and \(\rho\) is a particular good involution. \newline The main results are as follow. Let \(X\) be a quandle and let \(D(X)\) be the symmetric double of \(X\). The author introduces the notion of the canonical tensor product, or simply the tensor product \(X \otimes X\) of \(X\), and involutions \(\tau\) and \(\rho\) on \(X \otimes X\). The author gives a method of computing \(D(X) \otimes D(X)\) from \(X \otimes X\). The author computes \(X \otimes X\) and the quotient set \(X \otimes X/\langle \tau \rangle\) for every dihedral quandle \(X=R_n\), and for its symmetric double \(X=D(R_n)\), the author computes \(X \otimes X\) and \(X \otimes X/\langle \tau \rangle\), \(X \otimes X/\langle \rho \rangle\) and \(X \otimes X/\langle \tau, \rho \rangle\); the results consist of two types, one when \(n\) is odd, and the other when \(n\) is even. Further, the author discusses 1-handles and chords attached to any surface-link \(F\) that may be disconnected or non-orientable, and considers the knot quandle (when \(F\) is oriented) and the knot symmetric quandle and their tensor products, and shows that the tensor products provide us with complete classifications of 1-handles, and can be used to construct invariants of 1-handles.