A property of the skein polynomial with an application to contact geometry (Q2463363)

The main result of the paper under review is to show that there are only finitely many possibilities for skein polynomials \(P_K(l,m)\) of knots \(K\) under the condition that the span in the variable \(l\) is at most \(b\) and the canonical genus of \(K\) is at most \(g\) for any natural numbers \(b\) and \(g\). As an immediate corollary, there are only finitely many homogeneous knots of given genus and given value of the \(l\)-span of the skein polynomial. The second half of the paper discusses the Bennequin inequality by \textit{D. Bennequin} [Astérisque 107/108, 87--161 (1983; Zbl 0573.58022)]. For a Legendrian knot \(K\) in the standard contact \(3\)-dimensional space, the Thurston-Bennequin number \(tb(K)\) and the Maslov index \(\mu(K)\) are classical invariants. Bennequin proved that \(tb(K)+| \mu(K)| \) is at most \(2g(k)-1\), where \(k\) is the underlying topological knot type of \(K\), and \(g(k)\) is the genus of \(k\). This inequality is already known to be arbitrarily unsharp by \textit{Y. Kanda} [Invent. Math. 133, No.~2, 227--242 (1998; Zbl 0902.57007)], \textit{D. Fuchs} and \textit{S. Tabachnikov} [Topology 36, No.~5, 1025--1053 (1997; Zbl 0904.57006)], \textit{O. T. Dasbach} and \textit{B. S. Mangum} [Algebr. Geom. Topol. 1, 321--347 (2001; Zbl 0969.57014)]. The author gives a larger series of knots having arbitrarily unsharp Bennequin inequality, which extends the ones mentioned above.