To a presentation of an oriented link as the closure of a braid we assign a complex of
bigraded vector spaces. The Euler characteristic of this complex (and of
its triply-graded cohomology groups) is the HOMFLYPT polynomial of
the link. We show that the dimension of each cohomology group is a link
invariant.
Received: 2 February 2006
Revised: 2 April 2008
Accepted: 2 October 2006
Published: 4 June 2008
Proposed: Peter Ozsvath
Seconded: Vaughan Jones, Peter Teichner