Graph-valued invariants of virtual and classical links and minimality problem (Q2872209)

Two component classical links having zero linking number can be studied using virtual knot theory. Suppose that \(L=J \sqcup K\) is such a classical link with \(J\) fibered. The infinite cyclic cover of \(J\) is a thickened oriented surface \(\Sigma \times \mathbb{R}\). Since the linking number is \(0\), \(K\) lifts to a knot \(K'\) in \(\Sigma \times \mathbb{R}\). The virtual cover of \(K\) is the projection of \(K\) to an oriented virtual knot \(\upsilon\). Of course, there are infinitely many such lifts \(K'\) and potentially infinitely many different \(\upsilon\). There are many interesting situations however where \(\upsilon\) is an invariant of \(L\). For example, this occurs when \(K\) is ``close'' to a fiber of \(J\) (i.e. can be drawn as a diagram on a fiber \(\Sigma\) of \(J\)). \newline The authors of this paper apply the virtual cover construction to Kauffman and Manturov's generalization of the Kuperberg \(sl(3)\)-invariant to virtual knots. This is an invariant evaluated in \(\mathbb{Z}[A,A^{-1}][\mathscr{T}]\), where \(\mathscr{T}\) is the set of connected trivalent directed graphs containing neither bigons nor quadrilaterals, and each vertex is either a sink or a source. \newline The main application is to minimal diagrams of links \(L\) as above relative to a fixed fiber \(\Sigma\). If a particular state \(\upsilon_{us}\) in the generalized \(sl(3)\)-invariant is irreducible, then \(K'\) has the minimal number of double points in the projection to \(\Sigma\). The authors provide a non-trivial computation to illustrate their result.