On the Alexander polynomial of special alternating links

Abstract: The Alexander polynomial (1928) is the first polynomial invariant of links devised to help distinguish links up to isotopy. In recent work of the authors, Fox's conjecture (1962) -- stating that the absolute values of the coefficients of the Alexander polynomial for any alternating link are unimodal -- was settled for special alternating links. The present paper is a study of the special combinatorial and discrete geometric properties that Alexander polynomials of special alternating links possess along with a generalization to all Eulerian graphs, introduced by Murasugi and Stoimenow (2003). We prove that the Murasugi and Stoimenow generalized Alexander polynomials can be expressed in terms of volumes of root polytopes of unimodular matrices, building on the beautiful works of Li and Postnikov (2013) and T\'othm\'er\'esz (2022). We conjecture a generalization of Fox's conjecture to the Eulerian graph setting. We also bijectively relate two longstanding combinatorial models for the Alexander polynomials of special alternating links: Crowell's state model (1959) and Kauffman's state model (1982, 2006).