Five Lectures on Khovanov Homology

Paul Turner

Published 2006-06-19Version 1

These lecture notes, which were designed for the Summer School "Heegaard-Floer Homology and Khovanov Homology" in Marseilles, 29th May - 2nd June, 2006, provide an elementary introduction to Khovanov homology. The intended audience is graduate students with some minimal background in low-dimensional and algebraic topology. The lectures cover the basic definitions, important properties, a number of variants and some applications. At the end of each lecture the reader is referred to the relevant literature for further reading.