Galois action on knots I: Action of the absolute Galois group

Abstract

Our aim of this and subsequent papers is to enlighten (a part of, presumably) arithmetic structures of knots. This paper introduces a notion of pronite knots which extends topological knots and shows its various basic properties. Particularly an action of the absolute Galois group of the rational number eld on pronite knots is rigorously established, which is attained by our extending the action of Drinfeld's Grothendieck-Teichmuller group on pronite braid groups into on pronite knots.