The head and tail conjecture for alternating knots

Abstract

The colored Jones polynomial is an invariant of knots and links, which produces a sequence of Laurent polynomials. In this work, we study new power series link invariants, derived from the colored Jones polynomial, called its head and tail. We begin with a brief survey of knot theory and the colored Jones polynomial in particular. In Chapter 3, we use skein theory to prove that for adequate links, the n-th leading coefficient of the N-th colored Jones polynomial stabilizes when viewed as a sequence in N. This property allows us to define the head and tail for adequate links. In Chapter 4 we show a class of knots with trivial tail, and in Chapter 5 we develop techniques to calculate the head and tail for various knots and links using a graph derived from the link diagram.