A new obstruction of quasialternating links (Q2351939)

Quasi-alternating links are a generalization of alternating links from the viewpoint of Heegaard Floer homology theory. The definition is recursive, so it is not easy to determine whether a given knot or link is quasi-alternating or not, in general. There are several known properties of quasi-alternating links. For example, the double branched cover is an \(L\)-space, and the knot Floer homology, the reduced Khovanov homology, and the reduced odd Khovanov homology are all thin. Hence these can be obstructions for a knot or link to be quasi-alternating. The paper under review gives a remarkably simple obstruction. It claims that for any quasi-alternating link, the degree of its \(Q\)-polynomial is less than its determinant. As an application, it is shown that only finitely many Kanenobu knots can be quasi-alternating. The last part of the paper contains an interesting conjecture which claims that for a quasi-alternating link, the span of the Jones polynomial is less than or equal to the determinant. In fact, the authors prove this conjecture for closed \(3\)-braids.