Foam evaluation and Kronheimer-Mrowka theories (Q2214075)

Foams are certain well-behaved CW-complexes that serve as cobordism between trivalent graphs. A known homology theory for planar trivalent graphs is Kronheimer-Mrowka theory. Admissible colourings and an evaluation for coloured foams are defined. The evaluation takes values in the ring of homogenous symmetric polynomials in 3 variables. Local relations are studied which simplify calculations with foams. It is then shown that for foams embeddable in \(\mathbb{R}^3\), foam evaluation recovers the Kronheimer-Mrowka formula. Foams can be composed and thus form a category, with embedded trivalent graphs (webs) being the objects. In the computation of homology, webs span the spaces, while foam evaluation supplies the relations. This definition allows to discover many algebraic properties of the homologies, as well as other applications.