Alexander invariants of ribbon tangles and planar algebras

Ribbon tangles are proper embeddings of tori and cylinders in the $4$-ball~$B^4$, "bounding" $3$-manifolds with only ribbon disks as singularities. We construct an Alexander invariant $\mathsf{A}$ of ribbon tangles equipped with a representation of the fundamental group of their exterior in a free abelian group $G$. This invariant induces a functor in a certain category $\mathsf{R}ib_G$ of tangles, which restricts to the exterior powers of Burau-Gassner representation for ribbon braids, that are analogous to usual braids in this context. We define a circuit algebra $\mathsf{C}ob_G$ over the operad of smooth cobordisms, inspired by diagrammatic planar algebras introduced by Jones, and prove that the invariant $\mathsf{A}$ commutes with the compositions in this algebra. On the other hand, ribbon tangles admit diagrammatic representations, throught welded diagrams. We give a simple combinatorial description of $\mathsf{A}$ and of the algebra $\mathsf{C}ob_G$, and observe that our construction is a topological incarnation of the Alexander invariant of Archibald. When restricted to diagrams without virtual crossings, $\mathsf{A}$ provides a purely local description of the usual Alexander poynomial of links, and extends the construction by Bigelow, Cattabriga and the second author

The self-dual point of the two-dimensional random-cluster model is critical for q≥1q\geq 1

We prove a long-standing conjecture on random-cluster models, namely that the critical point for such models with parameter $q\geq1$ on the square lattice is equal to the self-dual point $p_{sd}(q) = \sqrt q /(1+\sqrt q)$. This gives a proof that the critical temperature of the $q$-state Potts model is equal to $\log (1+\sqrt q)$ for all $q\geq 2$. We further prove that the transition is sharp, meaning that there is exponential decay of correlations in the sub-critical phase. The techniques of this paper are rigorous and valid for all $q\geq 1$, in contrast to earlier methods valid only for certain given $q$. The proof extends to the triangular and the hexagonal lattices as well.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figure

On the scaling limits of planar percolation

We prove Tsirelson's conjecture that any scaling limit of the critical planar percolation is a black noise. Our theorems apply to a number of percolation models, including site percolation on the triangular grid and any subsequential scaling limit of bond percolation on the square grid. We also suggest a natural construction for the scaling limit of planar percolation, and more generally of any discrete planar model describing connectivity properties.Comment: With an Appendix by Christophe Garban. Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOP659 the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org