Extensions of augmented racks and surface ribbon cocycle invariants (Q6098393)

A rack is an algebraic structure with a binary operation, whose defining axioms correspond to Reidemeister moves II and III of planar diagrams of knots and links in Euclidean 3-space. A rack is called an augmented rack if the binary operation is given by an action of a group on a set. These objects have fairly well-developed cohomology theories with 2-cocycles relating to extensions, as in the case of groups, Lie algebras, and other algebraic structures. The purpose of the paper under review is to characterize extensions of augmented racks that are themselves augmented racks. The authors achieve this in terms of what they call fibrant and additive cohomology of racks. They also consider relations between extensions of racks and groups with their respective 2-cocycles relating through a nice formula. As applications, the authors construct coloring and cocycle invariants for compact orientable surfaces with boundaries in ribbon form embedded in 3-space.