UW Combinatorics and Geometry Seminar: Elena Hafner

The central question of knot theory is that of distinguishing links up to isotopy. The first polynomial invariant of links devised to help answer this question was the Alexander polynomial (1928). Almost a century after its introduction, it still presents us with tantalizing problems, such as Fox's conjecture (1962) that the absolute values of the coefficients of the Alexander polynomial ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_L(t)$of an alternating link $L$are unimodal. Fox's conjecture remains open in general with special cases settled by Hartley (1979) for two-bridged knots, by Murasugi (1985) for a family of alternating algebraic links, and by Ozsv\'ath and Szab\'o (2003) for the case of genus 2 alternating knots, among others. We settle Fox's conjecture for special alternating links. We do so by proving that a certain multivariate generalization of the Alexander polynomial of special alternating links is Lorentzian. As a consequence, we obtain that the absolute values of the coefficients of ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_L(t)$, where $L$is a special alternating link, form a log-concave sequence with no internal zeros. In particular, they are unimodal. This talk is based on joint work with Karola Mészáros and Alex Vidinas.