Matrices in companion rings, Smith forms, and the homology of 3-dimensional Brieskorn manifolds (Q1984333)

If \(g(t)\) is a monic polynomial over an integral domain \(R\), and \(C_{g}\) is its companion matrix, then the ring \(R[C_{g}]\) is called the companion ring of \(g(t)\). We assume further that \(R\) is an elementary divisor domain (EDD), which is equivalent to the condition that every square matrix over \(R\) has a Smith normal form (in particular, a principal ideal domain is EDD). In the present paper the authors prove results about Smith forms in this context and apply these to knot theory. For example, (Corollary B): if \(z(t)\) is the monic greatest common divisor of \(f(t)\) and \(g(t)\) in \(R[t]\), then the last nonzero determinantal divisor in the Smith form of \(f(C_{g})\) is (up to units in \(R\)) the resultant \textrm{Res}\((f(t)/z(t),g(t)/z(t))\). As an application they consider the Alexander polynomial \( f(t):=(t^{rs}-1)(t-1)/(t^{s}-1)(t^{r}-1)\in \mathbb{Z}[t]\) for the torus knot \(K(r,s)\) with \(r,s\) coprime. Put \(g(t)=t^{n}-1\) and suppose that the greatest common divisors \(x:=(r,n)\) and \(y:=(s,n)\) satisfy \(x\leq y\). Then (Theorem C): the non-unit invariant factors of the Smith form of \(f(C_{g})\) are \(r/x\) (\(y-x\) times), \(rs/xy\) (\(x-1\) times) and \(0\) (\((x-1)(y-1)\) times). The latter result provides the homology of the \(3\)-dimension Brieskorn manifold \(M(r,s,n)\).