paper

Nilpotent slices, Hilbert schemes, and the Jones polynomial

arXiv:math/0411015

Abstract

Seidel and Smith have constructed an invariant of links as the Floer cohomology for two Lagrangians inside a complex affine variety Y. This variety is the intersection of a semisimple orbit with a transverse slice at a nilpotent in the Lie algebra We exhibit bijections between a set of generators for the Seidel-Smith cochain complex, the generators in Bigelow's picture of the Jones polynomial, and the generators of the Heegaard Floer cochain complex for the double branched cover. This is done by presenting Y as an open subset of the Hilbert scheme of a Milnor fiber.

43 pages, 13 figures; revised version, to appear in Duke Math. J

Nilpotent slices, Hilbert schemes, and the Jones polynomial · wovepaper