No label defined (Q4328699)

This is a nicely written and useful book: I think that the author has done a great job in explaining quantum invariants of knots and 3-manifolds also on an intuitive and well-motivated, organically growing and not too technical level, at the same time however presenting a lot of material ordered by a clear guiding line. Finding a good balance between basic and advanced topics, motivation and technique, it should be interesting both for specialists (presenting in particular about 400 references) as well as for others not mainly interested in the often dominating technical point of view in the field. Of course, despite the subtitle, it is not a book on knots and 3-manifolds themselves -- there are very few explicit examples of knots and links and probably not a single one of a 3-manifold, in particular no computations or applications of the invariants for classes of knots and 3-manifolds are presented. So the main object of study is the fascinating and mysterious world of the infinity of quantum invariants themselves, their construction and in particular their hierarchy. The field started in 1984 with the discovery of the Jones polynomial which marked the beginning of an explosive interaction between low-dimensional topology and mathematical physics; despite this it seems to be still in a premature and early state, and the direction it will take in the long range seems somewhat mysterious and hidden. As expressed in the introduction (which is pleasant and instructive to read, as well as the introductory pages to each single chapter which nicely motivate the constructions, give a guide to the history of the development and to the relevant literature), the hope of the author is that finally knots and 3-manifolds will be studied by suitable functions and appropriate structures on the sets of knots or 3-manifolds: ``Number theory has developed, over the course of its long history, from a study of numbers to be, also, a study of the set of numbers, and in this way has obtained many profound results on the numbers themselves. Can knots and links be to topology as numbers are to number theory?'' (this explains the addition ``and their sets'' in the subtitle of the book). The author also states in the introduction that in ``classical'' topology the focus was mainly on individual knots and 3-manifolds, and that now finally one can study them as complete sets. This is true in the sense that the focus has shifted from knots and links themselves to their quantum invariants that is to certain algebraic structures reflecting the geometry; however also in classical knots theory and 3-topology the emphasis was on structural properties of classes of knots and 3-manifolds. Also, there is the other revolution of the 70's and 80's by the introduction of geometric structures which clearly gave much more insight into the global structure of the sets of knots and 3-manifolds so far (and incidentally produced as well infinitely many new invariants of links considering for example the volumes of their complements and of the various orbifolds and cone manifolds obtained by labelling the components of a link by natural or real numbers; now there seem to be the first steps to pass from one side to the other, see e.g. the paper of \textit{H. Murakami} and \textit{J. Murakami} [The colored Jones polynomials and the simplicial volume of a knot, Acta Math. 186, No. 1, 85-104 (2001)]). Very roughly, the main objects of the book are planar diagrams of (weighted) strings (representing knots, links or 3-manifolds) and local moves and manipulations of these local diagrams, capturing and assembling their essential features in equations and finally in suitable algebraic structures such as ribbon Hopf algebras or linear operators from which topological invariants can be derived. Once invariance under local moves is obtained (Reidemeister moves for knots and links, Markov moves for braids, Kirby or Fenn-Rourke moves for surgery presentations of 3-manifolds, Turaev moves for tangles, \dots), to each geometric object a well-defined algebraic one is associated (e.g. an element of a Hopf algebra or a linear operator, not depending on the representing diagram chosen). Considering linear presentations of the algebras and traces, topological invariants of knots and links are obtained. Such ribbon Hopf algebras are quite subtle algebraic objects, the typical examples are quantum groups as discovered and explored independently by Drinfel'd and Jimbo around 85 (these can be interpreted as certain noncommutative deformations of the function algebras of Lie groups or ``quantizations of Lie groups''), thus giving rise to the infinity of quantum invariants of knots and links (one for each simple Lie algebra and for each representation). Alternatively, by associating certain linear operators to local string diagrams (interpreted in quantum field theory as transitions between different states of a universe represented by vertical time-slices of a diagram, associating a vector space to each such state), by composition of the local transition operators one obtains operator invariants associated to global diagrams of knots and links; in order to have topological invariance, the local operators have to respect the local moves and thus have to fulfil certain equations such as the Yang-Baxter equations from statistical mechanics (``R-matrices''). The first seven chapters of the book are on quantum invariants of knots. The topics in the order presented are as follows: Reidemeister moves, Kauffman bracket, Jones and Alexander polynomials (considered from various points of view); braid groups and their representations (R-matrices); operator invariants of tangles via sliced diagrams; ribbon Hopf algebras and invariants of links (quantum groups \(U_q(sl_2)\) at a generic \(q\) and at a root of unity); monodromy representations of the braid groups derived from the Knizhnik and Zamolodchikov equation of quantum field theory; the Kontsevich invariant and its universality among quantum invariants; Vassiliev (finite type) invariants and universality of the Kontsevich invariant among Vassiliev invariants. ``With the introduction of the Kontsevich invariant and the theory of Vassiliev invariants, the quantum invariants become well-organized. Further, via a descending series of equivalence relations among knots given by Vassiliev invariants, the Kontsevich invariant gives a map of the set of knots into a lattice of infinite rank, which is now conjectured to classify knots.'' The remaining four chapters are devoted to quantum invariants of 3-manifolds, the topics are: surgery presentations of 3-manifolds; quantum \(SU(2)\) and \(SO(3)\) invariants of 3-manifolds via linear skein; quantum invariants in general via quantum invariants of links; perturbative invariants of knots and 3-manifolds (homology 3-spheres); the LMO (Le-Murakami-Ohtsuki) invariant and its universality among perturbative invariants; finite type invariants of integral homology 3-spheres and universality of the LMO invariant among finite type invariants. ``Via a descending series of equivalence relations among integral homology 3-spheres given by finite type invariants, the LMO invariant gives a map of the set of integral homology 3-spheres into a lattice of infinite rank, which is now conjectured to classify integral homology 3-spheres.'' Finally, there are eight appendices to which some of the more technical computations are relegated; also, complementing topics like associators and claspers are presented as well as a section on the physical background of the constructions.