SEIFERT SURFACES, COMMUTATORS AND VASSILIEV INVARIANTS

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We show that the Vassiliev invariants of a knot K, are obstructions to finding a regular Seifert surface, S, whose complement looks "simple" (e.g. like the complement of a disc) to the lower central series of its fundamental group. We also conjecture a characterization of knots whose invariants of all orders vanish in terms of their Seifert surfaces.