Khovanov homology and the symmetry group of a knot (Q529250)

A knot \(K\) in \(S^3\) is strongly invertible if there is an orientation preserving involution \(h\) of \(S^3\) which preserves the knot \(K\) set-wise but reverses the orientation of \(K\). The quotient of such an involution is a two-tangle \(T\) with trivial denominator closure. For each \(i\in\mathbb{Z}\), let \(T(i)\) denote the link obtained by adding \(i\) half-twists of the two right-hand strands of \(T\) and taking the numerator closure. The subject of this article is an invariant of the pair \((K,h)\), defined as the inverse limit \(\varkappa(K,h) = \displaystyle \lim_{\longleftarrow} \widetilde{Kh}(T(i))\) where \(\widetilde{Kh}(T(i))\) is the reduced Khovanov homology of \(T(i)\) with \(\mathbb{F}_2\) coefficients. The invariant \(\varkappa(K,h)\) is a \((\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}_{\text{odd}})\)-graded \(\mathbb{F}_2\)-vector space. The author proves several interesting results about \(\varkappa(K,h)\). First, he shows that if \(K\) is a strongly invertible knot with involution \(h\), then \(\varkappa(K,h)\) is trivial if and only if \(K\) is the trivial knot. The author proves that there are examples where \(\varkappa(K,h)\) gives more information than the reduced Khovanov homology. Additionally, \(\varkappa(K,h)\) can detect non-amphicheirality even when the Jones polynomial and signature fail to do so. In many of the above cases, the grading information on \(\varkappa(K,h)\) (rather than its total dimension) is what distinguishes the invariant on the two knots in question. The paper concludes with several conjectures about \(\varkappa(K,h)\), including one that conjecturally gives a characterization of \(L\)-space knots in terms of \(\varkappa(K,h)\).