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I apologize of already asked by someone else, but what (in your opinion) is the best package for computing HOMFLY polynomials?

minimax
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  • What do you mean by "best"? Is there something particular you'd like to accomplish? – Ryan Budney Feb 19 '13 at 22:59
  • @Ryan: I want to compute the HOMFLY polynomial of (3,19) cable over trefoil. – minimax Feb 20 '13 at 00:03
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    The KnotTheory` Mathematica package, available with lots of documentation and examples at http://katlas.org/wiki/Setup, can compute HOMFLY and many other knot polynomials and even produce cables for you automatically. – Steven Sivek Feb 20 '13 at 00:21
  • @Steven: Thanks, I will try it out! – minimax Feb 20 '13 at 01:11
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    There's also http://burtleburtle.net/bob/knot/homfly.html – Andrew Stacey Feb 20 '13 at 09:48
  • @Steven: I have installed the package and it works nice! One more question, how to generate the cable over trefoil in that package? – minimax Feb 21 '13 at 05:37
  • @minimax: see http://katlas.org/wiki/Cabling for an example. You have to import the program CableComponent.m, and then I believe you want to use CableComponent[BR[TorusKnot[19,3]], Knot[3,1]]. (I haven't used CableComponent before, but this knot seems to at least have the right Alexander polynomial according to the formula $\Delta(t) = \Delta_{T_{3,19}}(t) * \Delta_{T_{2,3}}(t^3)$.) – Steven Sivek Feb 21 '13 at 18:14

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