A homological definition of the HOMFLY polynomial
Abstract
We give a new definition of the knot invariant associated to the Lie algebra suN+1. The knot or link must be presented as the plat closure of a braid. The invariant is then a homological intersection pairing between two submanifolds of a configuration space of points in a disk. This generalizes previous work on the Jones polynomial, which is the case N=1.
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