Roberto Conti (Sapienza Univ. of Rome): Link invariants as positive definite functions on Thompson groups

Abstract: Exploring connections between subfactors and conformal field theories, Vaughan Jones recently observed that planar algebras give rise to unitary representations of the Thompson group F, and more generally,  to unitary representations of the group of fractions of certain categories. Remarkably, this procedure applies to oriented link invariants. In particular, a suitably normalized HOMFLYPT polynomial is a positive definite function on the oriented Thompson group. (Based on joint work with V. Aiello and V. Jones.)