Abstract:
The general structure of the perturbative expansion of the vacuum expectation value of a Wilson line operator in Chern-Simons gauge field theory is analyzed. The expansion is organized according to the independent group structures that appear at each order. It is shown that the analysis is greatly simplified if the group factors are chosen in a certain way that we call canonical. This enables us to show that the logarithm of a polynomial knot invariant can be written in terms of primitive Vassiliev invariants only.
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Received: 2 May 1996 / Accepted: 21 March 1997
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Alvarez, M., Labastida, J. Primitive Vassiliev Invariants and Factorization in Chern-Simons Perturbation Theory . Comm Math Phys 189, 641–654 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/s002200050222
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s002200050222