Additional Gradings in Khovanov Homology

Abstract

The main goal of the present paper is to construct new invariants of knots with additional structure by adding new gradings to the Khovanov complex. The ideas given below work in the case of virtual knots, closed braids and some other cases of knots with additional structure. The source of our additional grading may be topological or combinatorial; it is axiomatised for many partial cases. As a byproduct, this leads to a complex which in some cases coincides (up to grading renormalisation) with the usual Khovanov complex and in some other cases with the Lee-Rasmussen complex. The grading we are going to construct behaves well with respect to some generalisations of the Khovanov homology, e.g., Frobenius extensions. These new homology theories give sharper estimates for some knot characteristics, such as minimal crossing number, atom genus, slice genus, etc. Our gradings generate a natural filtration on the usual Khovanov complex. There exists a spectral sequence starting with our homology and converging to the usual Khovanov homology.