Finite type invariants of 3-manifolds

We review the original approach to the Le-Murakami-Ohtsuki (LMO) invariant of closed 3-manifolds (as opposed to the later approach based on the Aarhus integral). Following the ideas of surgery presentation, we introduce a class of combinatorial structures, called Kirby structures, which we prove to yield multiplicative 3-manifold invariants. We illustrate this with the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants. We then introduce a class of combinatorial structures, called pre-LMO structu...

For each finite dimensional, simple, complex Lie algebra $\mathfrak g$ and each root of unity $\xi$ (with some mild restriction on the order) one can define the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev (WRT) quantum invariant $\tau_M^{\mathfrak g}(\xi)\in \mathbb C$ of oriented 3-manifolds $M$. In the present paper we construct an invariant $J_M$ of integral homology spheres $M$ with values in the cyclotomic completion $\widehat {\mathbb Z [q]}$ of the polynomial ring $\mathbb Z [q]$, such ...

In the prequel of this paper, Kauffman and Ogasa introduced new topological quantum invariants of compact oriented 3-manifolds with boundary where the boundary is a disjoint union of two identical surfaces. The invariants are constructed via surgery on manifolds of the form $F \times I$ where $I$ denotes the unit interval. Since virtual knots and links are represented as links in such thickened surfaces, we are able also to construct invariants in terms of virtual link diagra...

We construct a Topological Quantum Field Theory (in the sense of Atiyah) associated to the universal finite-type invariant of 3-dimensional manifolds, as a functor from the category of 3-dimensional manifolds with parametrized boundary, satisfying some additional conditions, to an algebraic-combinatorial category. It is built together with its truncations with respect to a natural grading, and we prove that these TQFTs are non-degenerate and anomaly-free. The TQFT(s) induce(s...

In this article, we introduce a fixed parameter tractable algorithm for computing the Turaev-Viro invariants TV(4,q), using the dimension of the first homology group of the manifold as parameter. This is, to our knowledge, the first parameterised algorithm in computational 3-manifold topology using a topological parameter. The computation of TV(4,q) is known to be #P-hard in general; using a topological parameter provides an algorithm polynomial in the size of the input tri...

Using the recently developed theory of finite type invariants of integral homology 3-spheres we study the structure of the Torelli group of a closed surface. Explicitly, we construct (a) natural cocycles of the Torelli group (with coefficients in a space of trivalent graphs) and cohomology classes of the abelianized Torelli group; (b) group homomorphisms that detect (rationally) the nontriviality of the lower central series of the Torelli group. Our results are motivated by t...

In this thesis, we give a unification of the quantum WRT invariants. Given a rational homology 3-sphere M and a link L inside, we define the unified invariants, such that the evaluation of these invariants at a root of unity equals the corresponding quantum WRT invariant. In the SU(2) case, we assume the order of the first homology group of the manifold to be odd. Therefore, for rational homology 3-spheres, our invariants dominate the whole set of SO(3) quantum WRT invariants...

We recover the family of non-semisimple quantum invariants of closed oriented 3-manifolds associated with the small quantum group of $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ using purely combinatorial methods based on Temperley-Lieb algebras and Kauffman bracket polynomials. These invariants can be understood as a first-order extension of Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants, which can be reformulated following our approach in the case of rational homology spheres.

In this paper we construct invariants of 3-manifolds "\`a la Reshetikhin-Turaev" in the setting of non-semi-simple ribbon tensor categories. We give concrete examples of such categories which lead to a family of 3-manifold invariants indexed by the integers. We prove this family of invariants has several notable features, including: they can be computed via a set of axioms, they distinguish homotopically equivalent manifolds that the standard Reshetikhin-Turaev-Witten invaria...

We explicitly construct small triangulations for a number of well-known 3-dimensional manifolds and give a brief outline of some aspects of the underlying theory of 3-manifolds and its historical development.