The Khovanov complex for virtual links (Q950746)

The Khovanov complex of a knot or link diagram is a bigraded chain complex whose chain groups are generated by smoothed states of the diagram. The boundary map is a sum of linear maps for each pair of states which differ by a single smoothing, with maps where one component splits into two corresponding to comultiplication and maps where two components fuse into one corresponding to multiplication. Diagrams related by Reidemeister moves then yield chain-homotopic complexes, so the resulting homology groups form a knot invariant, with the Jones polynomial as the Euler characteristic. When this procedure is applied to virtual knots and links, there is a problem -- not every map splits or fuses components; some maps preserve the number of components. The author of this paper extends the Khovanov complex to virtual knots by setting such maps to zero, resulting in a chain complex over \(\mathbb{Z}_2\). Generalizations involving Frobenius extensions are explored, and the author's notion of \textit{atoms} is discussed.