Donaldson-Thomas invariants, torus knots, and lattice paths

Abstract

In this paper we find and explore the correspondence between quivers, torus knots, and combinatorics of counting paths. Our first result pertains to quiver representation theory -- we find explicit formulae for classical generating functions and Donaldson-Thomas invariants of an arbitrary symmetric quiver. We then focus on quivers corresponding to $(r,s)$ torus knots and show that their classical generating functions, in the extremal limit and framing $rs$, are generating functions of lattice paths under the line of the slope $r/s$. Generating functions of such paths satisfy extremal A-polynomial equations, which immediately follows after representing them in terms of the Duchon grammar. Moreover, these extremal A-polynomial equations encode Donaldson-Thomas invariants, which provides an interesting example of algebraicity of generating functions of these invariants. We also find a quantum generalization of these statements, i.e. a relation between motivic quiver generating functions, quantum extremal knot invariants, and $q$-weighted path counting. Finally, in the case of the unknot, we generalize this correspondence to the full HOMFLY-PT invariants and counting of Schr\"oder paths.