The Kontsevich integral for bottom tangles in handlebodies (Q2247193)

The Kontsevich integral was initially defined for links in the 3-sphere [\textit{D. Bar-Natan}, Topology 34, No. 2, 423--472 (1995; Zbl 0898.57001)] and was then extended to tangles in the 3-ball [\textit{T. Q. T. Le} and \textit{J. Murakami}, Compos. Math. 102, No. 1, 41--64 (1996; Zbl 0851.57007)]. In the paper under review, the authors define a Kontsevich integral for tangles in handlebodies. For this, they consider a suitable category of bottom tangles in handlebodies and a category of Jacobi diagrams in handlebodies. Their generalized Kontsevich integral is defined as a functor between these categories. A detailed description of the two categories is given and the Kontsevich invariant is computed on the generators of the source category. The authors prove that their invariant is a universal finite type invariant, and that it refines the LMO functor -- a functorial version of the Le-Murakami-Ohtsuki invariant -- of special Lagrangian cobordisms.