An unoriented skein exact triangle for knot Floer homology (Q2474592)

There are various interesting knot homology theories. This paper considers three knot homology theories, Khovanov's reduced theory \(\widetilde{Kh}(L)\), the Heegaard Floer homology \(\widehat{HF}(- \Sigma(L))\) of Ozsváth-Szabó for branched double covers of the three sphere, and the knot Floer homology \(\widehat{HFK}(L)\) of Ozsváth, Szabó and Rasmussen. Both \(\widetilde{Kh}(L)\) and \(\widehat{HF}(- \Sigma(L))\) are known to satisfy unoriented skein exact triangles. Successive application of such exact triangles to all crossings gives a spectral sequence whose \(E^2\) term is Khovanov homology, and which converges to \(\widehat{HF}(- \Sigma(L))\). The main result of this paper is that knot Floer homology also has an unoriented skein exact triangle. More precisely let \(L\) be a link in \(S^3\). Given a planar diagram of \(L\), let \(L_0\) and \(L_1\) be the two resolutions of \(L\) at a crossing in that diagram. Denote by \(l,l_0,l_1\) the number of components of the links \(L,L_0\) and \(L_1\), respectively, and set \(m = \max\{l,l_0,l_1\}\). Then there is an exact triangle \[ \widehat{HFK}(L) \otimes V^{m-l} \to \widehat{HFK}(L_0) \otimes V^{m-l_0} \to \widehat{HFK}(L_1) \otimes V^{m-l_1} \to \widehat{HFK}(L) \otimes V^{m-l} \] where \(V\) denotes a two dimensional vector space over \({\mathbb Z} / 2 {\mathbb Z}\). One might expect that this case also will give a spectral sequence whose \(E^2\) term is Khovanov homology, converging to \(\widehat{HFK}\).