Colorings beyond Fox: the other linear Alexander quandles (Q1748085)

The subject of the paper is a generalization of the Fox colorings of knots and links: given a prime \(p\) and an integer \(m\), we color the arcs by colors \(0,\dots,p-1\) subject to one condition for every crossing, requiring that \((1-m)\)-times the color of the bridge equals the color of the left hand arc minus \(m\)-times the color of the right hand arc, modulo \(p\). Equivalently, this is the quandle coloring invariant over the affine quandle over the group \(\mathbb Z_p\) with the automorphism \(m\). Existence of a non-trivial coloring is determined by the value of the Alexander polynomial at \(m\) modulo \(p\). The main result of the paper is a lower bound on the minimal number of colors needed for a non-trivial coloring of a given knot, using a neat combination of linear algebra and elementary graph theory. However, the bound the authors prove is often smaller than the actual minimum, as witnessed by many illustrative examples. The paper concludes with several techniques that can be used to find the minima in some special cases.