Narrow Results

The axioms of a quandle imply that the columns of its Cayley table are permutations. This paper studies quandles with exactly one non-trivially permuted column. Their automorphism groups, quandle polynomials, (symmetric) cohomology groups, and $\mathrm{\text{Hom}}$ quandles are studied. The quiver and cocycle invariant of links using these quandles are shown to relate to linking number.

Homomorphisms on quandle cohomology groups that raise the dimensions by one are studied in relation to the cocycle state-sum invariants of knots and knotted surfaces. Skein relations are also studied.

Cocycles are constructed by polynomial expressions for Alexander quandles. As applications, non-triviality of some quandle homology groups are proved, and quandle cocycle invariants of knots are studied. In particular, for an infinite family of quandles, the non-triviality of quandle homology groups is proved for all odd dimensions.

We define the fundamental quandle of a spatial graph and several invariants derived from it. In the category of graph tangles, we define an invariant based on the walks in the graph and cocycles from nonabelian quandle cohomology.

We provide a basis of the fourth cohomology group associated with any Alexander quandle on any finite field when its second cohomology vanishes. Furthermore, we give concrete presentations of many 4-cocycles in terms of relatively simple polynomials, which are expected to be useful in the study of surface links.

A (left) quandle is connected if its left translations generate a group that acts transitively on the underlying set. In 2014, Eisermann introduced the concept of quandle coverings, corresponding to constant quandle cocycles of Andruskiewitsch and Graña. A connected quandle is simply connected if it has no nontrivial coverings, or, equivalently, if all its second constant cohomology sets with coefficients in symmetric groups are trivial.

In this paper, we develop a combinatorial approach to constant cohomology. We prove that connected quandles that are affine over cyclic groups are simply connected (extending a result of Graña for quandles of prime size) and that finite doubly transitive quandles of order different from $4$ are simply connected. We also consider constant cohomology with coefficients in arbitrary groups.

A continuous cohomology theory for topological quandles is introduced, and compared to the algebraic theories. Extensions of topological quandles are studied with respect to continuous 2-cocycles, and used to show the differences in second cohomology groups for specific topological quandles. A method of computing the cohomology groups of the inverse limit is applied to quandles.