TOPOLOGICAL QUANDLES AND INVARIANTS OF LINKS

Abstract

We introduce a notion of topological quandle. Given a topological quandle Q we associate to every classical link L in ℝ 3 an invariant J Q (L) which is a topological space (defined up to a homeomorphism). The space J Q (L) can be interpreted as a space of colorings of a diagram of the link L with colors from the quandle Q.