Quantum Color Newton Rings

Abstract

We study integral Newton rings attached to symmetric quantum colors. We show that their boundary values at a deleted node are exactly the elements of Habiro's cyclotomic completion, and we describe their quantum neighborhoods at $q=1$ uniformly in the rank. The symmetric-color $\mathfrak{sl}_n$ invariants of a knot are the values of an element of such a ring. In its expansion at $q=1$, the coefficient of $(q-1)^m$ has denominator dividing the $(n-1+2m)$th power of the Alexander polynomial, with integral numerator, and this exponent is sharp. For $5_2$ and $6_1$ at $q=i$, the period matrices of the rank-two coefficient recurrences have spectral modules of exact order three in the Picard group of an affine elliptic curve.