Knotted trivalent graphs and construction of the LMO invariant from triangulations (Q2471359)

This paper constructs an invariant of a closed oriented \(3\)-manifold \(M\) using a triangulation of that manifold called a special spine. It coincides with the LMO invariant of \(M\#(-M)\) where \(-M\) denotes \(M\) with orientation reversed. The value of the invariant is given in terms of values of the Kontsevich invariant for the unknotted tetrahedron and for the Hopf link, which are composed using Bar-Natan-Thurston's ``connected sum'' and ``unzip'' operations. We may view this invariant as a `spin-off' of the LMO invariant in the sense that the Turaev-Viro invariant might be considered a `spin-off' of the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariant. Because triangulations are more combinatorial than surgery presentations, the construction in this paper may prove useful for performing calculations.