Generating set for nonzero determinant links under skein relation

Abstract

Traditionally introduced in terms of advanced topological constructions, many link invariants may also be defined in much simpler terms given their values on a few initial links and a recursive formula on a skein triangle. Then the crucial question to ask is how many initial values are necessary to completely determine such a link invariant. We focus on a specific class of invariants known as nonzero determinant link invariants, defined only for links which do not evaluate to zero on the link determinant. We restate our objective by considering a set S of links subject to the condition that if any three nonzero determinant links belong to a skein triangle, any two of these belonging to S implies that the third also belongs to S. Then we aim to determine a minimal set of initial generators so that S is the set of all links with nonzero determinant. We show that only the unknot is required as a generator if the skein triangle is unoriented. For oriented skein triangles, we show that the unknot and Hopf link orientations form a set of generators.