Constructing physically intuitive graph invariants

Abstract

In this brief note I try to give a simple example of where physical intuition about a collection of interacting qubits can lead to the construction of "natural" versions of what are, generically, quite abstract mathematical objects - in this case graph invariants. This note is written primarily for physicists who do not want to go through the painful process of trying to understand Ed Witten's vastly more complicated construction of physically intuitive knot invariants, but who'd like some idea of how physical intuition can play a role in such things.