A contribution of the trivial connection to the Jones polynomial and Witten's invariant of 3d manifolds. I (Q1912599)

We use a path integral formulation of the Chern-Simons quantum field theory in order to give a simple ``semi-rigorous'' proof of a recently conjectured limitation on the \(1/K\) expansion of the Jones polynomial of a knot and its relation to the Alexander polynomial. A combination of this limitation with the finite version of the Poisson resummation allows us to derive a surgery formula for the contribution of the trivial connection to Witten's invariant of rational homology spheres. The 2-loop part of this formula coincides with Walker's surgery formula for the Casson-Walker invariant. This proves a conjecture that the Casson-Walker invariant is proportional to the 2-loop correction to the trivial connection contribution. A contribution of the trivial connection to Witten's invariant of a manifold with nontrivial rational homology is calculated for the case of Seifert manifolds.