COMBINATORIC MASSEY–MILNOR LINKING THEORY

Abstract

In this paper following the scheme of Massey–Milnor invariant theory [C. C. Hsieh, Combinatoric and diagrammatic studies in knot theory J. Knot Theory Ramifications16 (2007) 1235–1253; C. C. Hsieh, Massey-Milnor linking = Chern-Simons-Witten graphs, J. Knot Theory Ramifications17 (2008) 877–903; C. C. Hsieh and S. W. Yang, Chern-Simons-Witten configuration space integrals in knot theory, J. Knot Theory Ramifications14 (2005) 689–711], we studied the first non-vanishing linkings of knot theory in ℝ3 and also derived the combinatorial formulae from which we could read out the invariants directly from the knot diagrams. Though the theme is calculus, the idea comes from perturbative quantum field theory.