Ruling invariants for Legendrian graphs (Q2093648)

Legendrian knots in standard contact \(3\)-space are not fully classified by their classical invariants (topological knot type, rotation number, Thurston-Bennequin invariant). Some Legendrian knots with the same classical invariants can be distinguished by help of the Chekanov-Eliashberg-dga. The latter yields computable invariants if the dga allows an augmentation, which is the case if there exists a normal ruling of the front projection. The purpose of the paper under review is to extend the notion of ruling to even-valent Legendrian graphs. The Chekanov-Eliashberg-dga has been generalized to Legendrian graphs by the first two authors in [J. Topol. 13, No. 2, 777--869 (2020; Zbl 1455.53095)], the paper under review shows that the existence of an augmentation for this dga is equivalent to the existence of a ruling. Moreover, the authors define ruling invariants, show that they are invariant under Reidemeister moves, and prove that the ungraded ruling polynomial is a coefficient of the Kauffman-Vogel polynomial of the underlying (topological) graph.