A BRACKET POLYNOMIAL FOR GRAPHS, III: VERTEX WEIGHTS

Abstract

In earlier work the Kauffman bracket polynomial was extended to an invariant of marked graphs, i.e. looped graphs whose vertices have been partitioned into two classes (marked and not marked). The marked-graph bracket polynomial is readily modified to handle graphs with weighted vertices. We present formulas that simplify the computation of this weighted bracket for graphs that contain twin vertices or are constructed using graph composition, and we show that graph composition corresponds to the construction of a link diagram from tangles.