Narrow Results

The slope conjecture relates the degree of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot to boundary slopes of essential surfaces. We develop a general approach that matches a state-sum formula for the colored Jones polynomial with the parameters that describe surfaces in the complement. We apply this to Montesinos knots proving the slope conjecture for Montesinos knots, with some restrictions.

A packing function on a set Ω in Rⁿ is a one-to-one correspondence between the set of lattice points in Ω and the set N₀ of non-negative integers. It is proved that if r and s are relatively prime positive integers such that r divides s - 1, then there exist two distinct quadratic packing polynomials on the sector {(x, y) ∈ R² : 0 ≤ y ≤ rx/s}. For the rational numbers 1/s, these are the unique quadratic packing polynomials. Moreover, quadratic quasi-polynomial packing functions are constructed for all rational sectors.

This paper surveys the theory of functional identities and its applications. No prior knowledge of the theory is required to follow the paper.