Noncommutative rational functions and boundary links (Q810942)

The study of finite automate and their associated formal languages led S. Kleene and M. Schützenberger in the early sixties to the notion of a rational formal power series, generalizing the usual notion of a rational function. It turns out that there is a surprisingly tight relation between noncommutative rational functions and algebraic objects appearing in topology of manifolds in the study of boundary links. One aspect of this connection was established by the author and \textit{P. Vogel} [``The Cohn localization of the free group ring'', Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. (to appear)]; it was shown that any rational function generates a link module, i.e. a module which can be realized as homology module of a boundary link and any semi-simple link module can be obtained in this way (cf. {\S} 4 of the present paper). The present paper establishes a relation between link modules and rational power series in the other direction: \(\{\) link\(\}\to \{rational\) function\(\}\). It is shown here that each link module M defines a rational formal power series \(\chi_ M\), and \(\chi_ M\) contains all semi-simple information about M: two semi-simple link modules are isomorphic if and only if the corresponding functions \(\chi_ M\) coincide. In the case of knots \(\chi_ M\) can be expressed through the classical Alexander polynomial. Examples show that for links of \(\mu >1\) components the rational function \(\chi_ M\) is richer than the link Alexander polynomial derived by studying the homology of the free abelian covering. The present paper associates a sequence of rational formal power series \(\chi_ 1,...,\chi_ n\) with any n-dimensional boundary link, providing rather strong link invariants. To compute \(\chi_ i\) one has to calculate a finite number of integers (the traces of certain linear maps acting on the homology of a Seifert surface). Among the other results of the paper let us mention the symmetry property (cf. Th. 8.2) \(\chi_ q+{\bar \chi}_ q=0\) (similar to the well-known symmetry property of the Alexander polynomial) and also \(\chi_ q=\eta -{\bar \eta}\) for a rational function \(\eta\) with integral coefficients if the link is null concordant (it is a generalization of a theorem of Fox and Milnor).