A Kontsevich integral of order 1 (Q2163643)

In this paper the author produces a 1-cocycle on the space of long knots in dimension 3. His cocycle appears to be an integral lift of the Teiblum-Turchin cocycle, and he shows it satisfies a similar relation to the type-2 Vassiliev invariant, sometimes also known as the Casson invariant. This is a rather interesting and unorthodox paper in several ways, in that it pursues Vassiliev invariants very much in the spirit Vassiliev intended, i.e. in the language of discriminants and intersection theory, as opposed to the modern homotopy-theoretic analogues that use the language of Embedding (functor) Calculus. In that regard this work is closely related to the work of \textit{T. Fiedler} [``Singularization of knots and closed braids'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1405.5562}; ``Knot polynomials from 1-cocycles'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1709.10332}; ``Quantum one-cocycles for knots'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1304.0970}] where a discriminant-based language for Vassiliev cocycles is developed. If one softens one's demands and only asks for cohomology classes on the space of knots, [\textit{R. Budney}, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 101, No. 2, 477--496 (2010; Zbl 1201.57021)] gives a rather explicit formalism for one such that detects the Gramain cycle. Using analogous techniques one can produce a (often independent, depending on the path-component of the knot space) cohomology class that detects `Roll spinning' cycles. The disadvantage of this formalism is one does not evaluate these cohomology classes at the cocycle level, i.e. it is not diagrammatic in nature. These cohomology classes use the geometric properties of the knot exterior (equivalently, algebraic properties of the knot group and peripheral system). Moreover, these cohomology classes do not have an obvious relationship to the type-2 Vassiliev invariant. It should be further pointed out, that this paper fits into a trend in recent ideas. Following Gabai's 4-dimensional light-bulb theorem [\textit{D. Gabai}, J. Am. Math. Soc. 33, No. 3, 609--652 (2020; Zbl 1479.57048)], strong connections between the isotopy problem for (some) surfaces in 4-manifolds and the homotopy-type of spaces of knots in 4-manifolds have been observed. This implicitly relates the isotopy problem of surfaces in 4-manifolds, a well-known classical problem, to the homotopy-theory of embedding spaces, whose cohomology is computable in this Vassiliev formalism of discriminants. Thus these sorts of techniques should give rise (likely with much effort) to alternative formalisms for describing the isotopy classes of surfaces in 4-manifolds.