Nilpotent slices, Hilbert schemes, and the Jones polynomial (Q2495306)

In [Duke Math. J. 134, 453--514 (2006; Zbl 1108.57011)], \textit{P. Seidel} and \textit{I. Smith} introduced a link invariant ``symplectic Khovanov homology'' which they conjecture to agree with the Khovanov homology developed by \textit{M. Khovanov} in [ibid. 101, No. 3, 359--426 (2000; Zbl 0960.57005)] after a collapsing of the bigrading of Khovanov's theory. Thus conjecturally the theory of Seidel and Smith provides a symplectic geometric interpretation of Khovanov's theory. However the Seidel-Smith theory does not provide the ease of computation of Khovanov's work, and the Jones polynomial, which is the Euler characteristic of Khovanov homology, cannot be reconstructed from Seidel-Smith theory due to the collapsing of the bigrading. In this important, well-written article, the author provides a concrete set of generators for the Seidel-Smith cochain complex together with a notion of bigrading and bijections between this set of generators, \textit{S. Bigelow}'s generators for his interpretation of the Jones polynomial [Ohtsuki, T. (ed.) et al., Invariants of Knots and 3-manifolds, Kyoto (2001), Geom. Topol. Monogr. 4, 29--41 (2002; Zbl 1035.57004)], and the generators of the Heegaard Floer cochain complex for the double branched cover of the link. In so doing, the author demonstrates a method for recovering the Jones polynomial from Seidel-Smith theory and clearly ties together the work of Seidel-Smith, Bigelow, and \textit{P. Ozsváth} and \textit{Z. Szabó} [Adv. Math. 194, 1--33 (2005; Zbl 1076.57013)].