Khovanov homology detects the trefoils (Q2119904)

A famous open question in knot theory is whether the Jones polynomial detects the unknot. The weaker question, whether Khovanov homology detects the unknot, was answered affirmatively by \textit{P. B. Kronheimer} and \textit{T. S. Mrowka} [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 113, 97--208 (2011; Zbl 1241.57017)]. In the spirit of these questions one may also ask whether the trefoil knot is detected by the Jones polynomial, or by Khovanov homology. In this paper the authors answer the latter affirmatively. The proof idea starts off similarly to Kronheimer and Mrowka's unknot detection result, in that they use a spectral sequence relating reduced Khovanov homology \(\mathrm{Khr}(K)\) to singular instanton knot homology \(I^\sharp(S^3,K)\) establishing \[ \dim_\mathbb{Z} \mathrm{Khr}(K) \geq \dim_\mathbb{Z} I^\sharp(S^3,K). \] Kronheimer and Mrowka showed that the right hand side is odd and greater than \(1\) for non-trivial knots. To get the result for trefoils, the authors now consider the sutured instanton homology of the knot complement, which satisfies \[ KHI(S^3,K) \cong I^\sharp(S^3,K)\otimes \mathbb{C}. \] This group has additional structure in the form of a symmetric Alexander grading which satisfies by work of Kronheimer-Mrowka \(KHI(S^3,K,g(K)) \not=0\), and \(KHI(S^3,K,i) = 0\) for \(i>g(K)\), as well as \(KHI(S^3,K,g(K))\cong \mathbb{C}\) if and only if \(K\) is fibered. Here \(g(K)\) is the genus of the knot. The authors show that if \(K\) is a genus \(>0\) fibered knot in \(Y\not\cong \#^{2g}(S^1\times S^2)\) with fibre \(\Sigma\), then \(KHI(Y,K,[\Sigma],g-1) \not=0\). Now if \(\dim_\mathbb{C} KHI(S^3,K) = 3\), then \(KHI(S^3,K)\) is supported in Alexander grading \(0\) and \(\pm g(K)\), and by the previous result we get \(g(K)=1\). Furthermore, \(K\) is also fibred, and so \(K\) is either the trefoil or the figure-8 knot. As \(KHI\) of the figure-8 knot is \(5\)-dimensional, only the trefoil remains. Another result of the authors is that the representation variety of a knot detects the trefoil, provided a non-degeneracy condition is satisfied.