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Skein spaces and spin structures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1999

JOHN W. BARRETT
Affiliation:
School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD; e-mail: jwb@maths.nott.ac.uk

Abstract

This paper relates skein spaces based on the Kauffman bracket and spin structures. A spin structure on an oriented 3-manifold provides an isomorphism between the skein space for parameter A and the skein space for parameter −A.

There is an application to Penrose's binor calculus, which is related to the tensor calculus of representations of SU(2). The perspective developed here is that this tensor calculus is actually a calculus of spinors on the plane and the matrices are determined by a type of spinor transport which generalizes to links in any 3-manifold.

A second application shows that there is a skein space which is the algebra of functions on the set of spin structures for the 3-manifold.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
The Cambridge Philosophical Society 1999

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