Legendrian knots, transverse knots and combinatorial Floer homology (Q2426851)

Using the combinatorial approach to knot Floer homology, the authors define an invariant for Legendrian knots (or links) in the three-sphere, with values in knot Floer homology. They also show how to use this invariant to construct an invariant of transverse knots. In order to be able to describe the invariants the authors first recall some basic facts about the combinatorial chain complex for Heegaard Floer homology, after which they describe the relation between grid diagrams and Legendrian knots. For a grid diagram \(G\) representing an oriented Legendrian knot, they construct two special cycles \(z^+\) and \(z^-\), the homology classes of which are called Legendrian invariants of the knot. Besides investigating in detail properties of those new invariants, they also show how to use this new pair of invariants to distinguish Legendrian knots with the same classical invariants. In particular, as an application they reprove the result that the knot \(5_2\) is not Legendrian simple. Finally, it is shown that most of the techniques can also be applied for links.