ON FINITE TYPE 3-MANIFOLD INVARIANTS I

Abstract

Recently Ohtsuki [Oh2], motivated by the notion of finite type knot invariants, introduced the notion of finite type invariants for oriented, integral homology 3-spheres. In the present paper we propose another definition of finite type invariants of integral homology 3-spheres and give equivalent reformulations of our notion. We show that our invariants form a filtered commutative algebra. We compare the two induced filtrations on the vector space on the set of integral homology 3-spheres. As an observation, we discover a new set of restrictions that finite type invariants in the sense of Ohtsuki satisfy and give a set of axioms that characterize the Casson invariant. Finally, we pose a set of questions relating the finite type 3-manifold invariants with the (Vassiliev) knot invariants.