Galois symmetries of knot spaces

Abstract

We exploit the Galois symmetries of the little disks operads to show that many differentials in the Goodwillie-Weiss spectral sequences approximating the homology and homotopy of knot spaces vanish at a prime $p$. Combined with recent results on the relationship between embedding calculus and finite-type theory, we deduce that the $(n+1)$-st Goodwillie-Weiss approximation is a $p$-local universal Vassiliev invariant of degree $\leq n$ for every $n \leq p + 1$.