Homotopy approximations to the space of knots, Feynman diagrams, and a conjecture of Scannell and Sinha

James Conant

Published 2006-01-26, updated 2010-08-26Version 2

Scannell and Sinha considered a spectral sequence to calculate the rational homotopy groups of spaces of long knots in n-dimensional Euclidean space, for n greater than or equal to 4. At the end of their paper they conjecture that when n is odd, the terms on the antidiagonal on the second page precisely give the space of primitive Feynman diagrams related to the theory of Vassiliev invariants. In this paper we prove that conjecture. This has the application that the path components of the terms of the Taylor tower for the space of classical long knots are in one-to-one correspondence with quotients of the module of Feynman diagrams, even though the Taylor tower does not actually converge. This provides strong evidence that the stages of the Taylor tower give rise to universal Vassiliev knot invariants in each degree.