Milnor invariants of string links, trivalent trees, and configuration space integrals

Abstract

We study configuration space integral formulas for Milnor's homotopy link invariants, showing that they are in correspondence with certain linear combinations of trivalent trees. Our proof is essentially a combinatorial analysis of a certain space of trivalent “homotopy link diagrams” which corresponds to all finite type homotopy link invariants via configuration space integrals. An important ingredient is the fact that configuration space integrals take the shuffle product of diagrams to the product of invariants. We ultimately deduce a partial recipe for writing explicit integral formulas for products of Milnor invariants from trivalent forests. We also obtain cohomology classes in spaces of link maps from the same data.