Rational knots and a theorem of Kanenobu.
Using the recent Gauß diagram formulas for Vassiliev invariants of Polyak-Viro-Fiedler and combining these formulas with the Bennequin inequality, we prove several inequalities for positive knots relating their Vassiliev invariants, genus and degrees of the Jones polynomial. As a consequence, we prove that for any of the polynomials of Alexander/Conway, Jones, HOMFLY, Brandt-Lickorish-Millett-Ho and Kauffman there are only finitely many positive knots with the same polynomial and no positive knot...
It is known that the minimal degree of the Jones polynomial of a positive knot is equal to its genus, and the minimal coefficient is 1, with a similar relation for links. We extend this result to almost positive links and partly identify the next three coefficients for special types of positive links. We also give counterexamples to the Jones polynomial-ribbon genus conjectures for a quasipositive knot. Then we show that the Alexander polynomial completely detects the minimal genus and fiber property...
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