Search results for ""author louis h kauffman""

On Knots is a journey through the theory of knots, starting from the simplest combinatorial ideas--ideas arising from the representation of weaving patterns. From this beginning, topological invariants are constructed directly: first linking numbers, then the Conway polynomial and skein theory. This paves the way for later discussion of the recently discovered Jones and generalized polynomials. The central chapter, Chapter Six, is a miscellany of topics and recreations. Here the reader will find the quaternions and the belt trick, a devilish rope trick, Alhambra mosaics, Fibonacci trees, the topology of DNA, and the author's geometric interpretation of the generalized Jones Polynomial. Then come branched covering spaces, the Alexander polynomial, signature theorems, the work of Casson and Gordon on slice knots, and a chapter on knots and algebraic singularities.The book concludes with an appendix about generalized polynomials.

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This book offers a self-contained account of the 3-manifold invariants arising from the original Jones polynomial. These are the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev and the Turaev-Viro invariants. Starting from the Kauffman bracket model for the Jones polynomial and the diagrammatic Temperley-Lieb algebra, higher-order polynomial invariants of links are constructed and combined to form the 3-manifold invariants. The methods in this book are based on a recoupling theory for the Temperley-Lieb algebra. This recoupling theory is a q-deformation of the SU(2) spin networks of Roger Penrose. The recoupling theory is developed in a purely combinatorial and elementary manner. Calculations are based on a reformulation of the Kirillov-Reshetikhin shadow world, leading to expressions for all the invariants in terms of state summations on 2-cell complexes. Extensive tables of the invariants are included. Manifolds in these tables are recognized by surgery presentations and by means of 3-gems (graph encoded 3-manifolds) in an approach pioneered by Sostenes Lins. The appendices include information about gems, examples of distinct manifolds with the same invariants, and applications to the Turaev-Viro invariant and to the Crane-Yetter invariant of 4-manifolds.

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The authors aim to reinstate a spirit of philosophical enquiry in physics. They abandon the intuitive continuum concepts and build up constructively a combinatorial mathematics of process. This radical change alone makes it possible to calculate the coupling constants of the fundamental fields which — via high energy scattering — are the bridge from the combinatorial world into dynamics. The untenable distinction between what is ‘observed’, or measured, and what is not, upon which current quantum theory is based, is not needed. If we are to speak of mind, this has to be present — albeit in primitive form — at the most basic level, and not to be dragged in at one arbitrary point to avoid the difficulties about quantum observation. There is a growing literature on information-theoretic models for physics, but hitherto the two disciplines have gone in parallel. In this book they interact vitally.

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