Homotopy Bott-Taubes integrals and the Taylor tower for spaces of knots and links (Q331940)

In this paper, the author continues to develop the homotopy-theoretic approach to Bott-Taubes configuration space integrals begun in his thesis work. The main result is the extension of the Bott-Taubes integration and their homotopy-theoretic versions to the multi-stages of the Taylor multi-towers for spaces of long knots and links arising from manifold calculus of functors. In more detail, the author considers the ``punctured links'' model for the Taylor multi-tower and extends from long knots to string links the result of \textit{I. Volić} [Topology Appl. 153, No. 15, 2893--2904 (2006; Zbl 1110.57008)] which says that Bott-Taubes, or configuration space, integrals factor through this tower. Since these integrals realize finite type invariants of knots in the Taylor tower for long knots, the author is then able to deduce the same result for string links. He then also extends an alternative method, a more homotopy-theoretic approach via a Pontrjagin-Thom construction that he introduced in [\textit{R. Koytcheff}, Algebr. Geom. Topol. 9, No. 3, 1467--1501 (2009; Zbl 1175.57012)], to the Taylor tower and this allows him to recover the Milnor triple linking number and recognize it as living in the \(T_{(2,2,2)}\) stage of the Taylor multi-tower for three-component string links. As he notes, this could have been done using configuration space integrals, but the homotopy-theoretic approach has some advantages such as obtaining integral or mod \(p\) classes. Lastly, the author discusses connections between his work and some known results about homotopy string links.