THE HOMFLY POLYNOMIAL FOR LINKS IN RATIONAL HOMOLOGY 3-SPHERES

We use intrinsic 3-manifold topology to construct formal power series invariants for links in a large class of rational homology 3-spheres, which generalizes the 2-variable Jones polynomial (HOMFLY). As a consequence, we show that a certain completion of the HOMFLY skein module of a homotopy 3-sphere is isomorphic to that of the genuine 3-sphere.