Congruence skein relations for colored HOMFLY-PT invariants (Q6040864)

The two-variable HOMFLYPT polynomial satisfies a well-known skein relation that allows to compute it recursively for all oriented links \(\mathcal{L}\) in \(S^3\). There is no known analog for the colored HOMFLYPT polynomial of links, and the authors conjecture such a relation at the level of congruences for some special choice of colors and test it for some simple torus links. The conjecture implies a generalization of the Hecke lifting conjecture to framed links. This generalization also follows from the LMOV integrality conjecture for framed links motivated by the large \(N\) duality from physics. In fact, it is searching for a proof of the Hecke lifting conjecture that led the authors to the discovery of their congruence skein relation. The colors are elements of the skein of the annulus indexed by partitions. The authors redefine them using the characters of the symmetric group, and obtain a reformulated HOMFLYPT polynomial \(\check{\mathcal{Z}}_{\vec{\mu}}(\mathcal{L})\) with better algebraic properties. For example, they prove that it belongs to \(\mathbb{Z}[z^2,a^{\pm 1}]\) with \(z:=q-q^{-1}\), and obtain simple proofs of the symmetries of the colored HOMFLYPT invariants based on this. Stronger results are obtained when \(\vec{\mu}\) is a vector of identical single row partitions of a prime \(p\). Denote the quantum integers \(\{p\}:=q^p-q^{-p}\), \([p]:=\frac{q^p-q^{-p}}{q-q^{-1}}\), and simplify the \(\vec{\mu}\) index to just \(p\). Then for \(\mathcal{L}(+1)\) obtained by adding a single positive twist to one of the components of \(\mathcal{L}\) it is proved that \[ \check{\mathcal{Z}}_{p}(\mathcal{L}(+1))\equiv (-1)^{p-1}a^{p}\check{\mathcal{Z}}_{p}(\mathcal{L})\bmod [p]^2. \] But the main result is the conjectural congruence skein relation: \[ \check{\mathcal{Z}}_{p}(\mathcal{L}_+)-\check{\mathcal{Z}}_{p}(\mathcal{L}_-)\equiv \begin{cases}(-1)^{p-1}\check{\mathcal{Z}}_{p}(\mathcal{L}_0)\bmod [p]^2,&\text{for self-crossings;}\\ (-1)^{p-1} \{p\}^2[p]\check{\mathcal{Z}}_{p}(\mathcal{L}_{0})\bmod \{p\}^2[p]^2, &\text{for crossings of different components}. \end{cases} \] The conjecture is confirmed for some special Conway triples \(\mathcal{L}_+\), \(\mathcal{L}_-\), \(\mathcal{L}_{0}\).