Contributions to Khovanov Homology

Khovanov homology ist a new link invariant, discovered by M. Khovanov, and used by J. Rasmussen to give a combinatorial proof of the Milnor conjecture. In this thesis, we give examples of mutant links with different Khovanov homology. We prove that Khovanov's chain complex retracts to a subcomplex, whose generators are related to spanning trees of the Tait graph, and we exploit this result to investigate the structure of Khovanov homology for alternating knots. Further, we extend Rasmussen's invariant to links. Finally, we generalize Khovanov's categorifications of the colored Jones polynomial, and study conditions under which our categorifications are functorial with respect to colored framed link cobordisms. In this context, we develop a theory of Carter--Saito movie moves for framed link cobordisms.Comment: 77 pages; PhD thesis, Zurich, 200

A spanning tree model for Khovanov homology

We use a spanning tree model to prove a result of E. S. Lee on the support of Khovanov homology of alternating knots.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures; Footnote 1 was changed, a remark was rephrased as a theorem, a reference was added, typos were correcte

Khovanov Homology and Conway Mutation

We present an easy example of mutant links with different Khovanov homology. The existence of such an example is important because it shows that Khovanov homology cannot be defined with a skein rule similar to the skein relation for the Jones polynomial.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

On Gradings in Khovanov homology and sutured Floer homology

We discuss generalizations of Ozsvath-Szabo's spectral sequence relating Khovanov homology and Heegaard Floer homology, focusing attention on an explicit relationship between natural Z (resp., 1/2 Z) gradings appearing in the two theories. These two gradings have simple representation-theoretic (resp., geometric) interpretations, which we also review.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, to be submitted to Proceedings of Jaco's 70th Birthday Conference, 201

Charge profile of surface doped C60

We study the charge profile of a C60-FET (field effect transistor) as used in the experiments of Schoen, Kloc and Batlogg. Using a tight-binding model, we calculate the charge profile treating the Coulomb interaction in a mean-field approximation. The charge profile behaves similarly to the case of a continuous space-charge layer, in particular it is confined to a single interface layer for doping higher than ~0.3 electron (or hole) per C60 molecule. The morahedral disorder of the C60 molecules smoothens the structure in the density of states.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figure