Disjoint unions of PD-codes #
Placing two diagrams in disjoint discs concatenates their crossings and arcs. Crossing-free circles are retained separately. This operation allows a local diagram replacement on an isolated component to be used in the presence of an arbitrary surrounding diagram.
The number of link components and the number of circles in each smoothing are additive. For
nonempty diagrams the normalized convention ⟨unknot⟩ = 1 gives
⟨D ⊔ E⟩ = δ ⟨D⟩ ⟨E⟩, where δ = -(a² + a⁻²). The nonemptiness conditions matter:
the empty diagram has bracket 1, and adjoining it contributes no factor of δ.
References #
- W. B. R. Lickorish, An Introduction to Knot Theory, Springer GTM 175 (1997), Chapter 3 (the state sum and its circle normalization).
- L. H. Kauffman, State models and the Jones polynomial, Topology 26 (1987), 395–407.
The first diagram's crossing slots occupy the first block of crossings.
The second diagram's crossing slots occupy the second block of crossings.
Splitting a slot in the first crossing block recovers its original label.
Splitting a slot in the second crossing block recovers its original label.
The disjoint union of two PD-codes. Both the crossing labels and the half-edge labels are concatenated, and the arc matching never joins the two blocks.
Equations
- One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.
Instances For
The half-edge labelling acts separately on the two blocks.
The arc matching acts separately on the two blocks.
Disjoint union adds the crossing-free circles.
The over-strand at a crossing of the first summand is unchanged.
The over-strand at a crossing of the second summand is unchanged.
A crossing of the first diagram retains its four incident half-edges.
A crossing of the second diagram retains its four incident half-edges.
The strand traversal acts separately on the two diagrams.
The component permutation is the disjoint sum of the two component permutations.
The number of components meeting crossings is additive under disjoint union.
The number of link components is additive under disjoint union, including crossing-free components.
Reflection commutes with disjoint union.
Smoothing a disjoint union smooths each diagram independently.
The state traversal is the disjoint sum of the traversals of the restricted states.
The smoothing circles of a disjoint union are the circles from the two summands.
The state sum #
The bracket of the disjoint union of two nonempty diagrams is the product of their brackets times the circle value. Nonemptiness is measured by the component count, so crossing-free diagrams are included.
An empty first summand contributes no factor of the circle value.
An empty second summand contributes no factor of the circle value.