The Kauffman bracket skein module of a twist knot exterior (Q1766309)

Let \(M\) be an orientable 3-manifold. A framed link in \(M\) is an embedding of a disjoint collection of annuli into \(M\). Two framed links in \(M\) are equivalent if there is an isotopy of \(M\) taking one to another. Let \(\mathcal{L}_M\) denote the set of equivalence classes of framed links in \(M\), including the empty link. Form a free \(\mathcal{R L}_M\) module with basis \(\mathcal{L}_M\) and \(\mathcal{R}= \mathbb{Z}[t^{\pm 1}]\). Define \(S(M)\) to be the smallest submodule of \(\mathcal{R L}_M\) containing all expressions of the form \(K -t K_0 -t^{-1} K_{\infty}\) and \(U+t^2+t^{-2}\), where \(U\) is the unknot and \(K\), \(K_0\) and \(K_{\infty}\) are framed links that differ only at one crossing, as usual in skein theory. (\(K_0\), \(K_{\infty}\) are identical to \(K\) except that one crossing of \(K\) has been smoothed out in two different ways to generate \(K_0\) and \(K_{\infty}\).) The {Kauffman bracket skein module} \(K(M)\) is the quotient \(\mathcal{R L}_M/S(M)\). In this article the authors compute the Kauffman bracket skein module of the complement of a twist knot, finding that it is free and infinite dimensional. The basis consists of cables of a two component link, one component of which is a meridian of the knot. The cabling of the meridian can be arbitrarily large while the cabling of the other component is limited to the number of twists in the twist knot.