Burnside obstructions to the Montesinos-Nakanishi 3-move conjecture

Yasutaka Nakanishi asked in 1981 whether a 3-move is an unknotting operation. In Kirby's problem list, this question is called `The Montesinos-Nakanishi 3-move conjecture'. We define the n-th Burnside group of a link and use the 3rd Burnside group to answer Nakanishi's question; ie, we show that some links cannot be reduced to trivial links by 3-moves.Comment: Published by Geometry and Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTVol6/paper11.abs.htm

Deformation of string topology into homotopy skein modules

Relations between the string topology of Chas and Sullivan and the homotopy skein modules of Hoste and Przytycki are studied. This provides new insight into the structure of homotopy skein modules and their meaning in the framework of quantum topology. Our results can be considered as weak extensions to all orientable 3-manifolds of classical results by Turaev and Goldman concerning intersection and skein theory on oriented surfaces.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol3/agt-3-34.abs.htm