Connected sums and directed systems in knot Floer homologies

We prove a number of fundamental properties about instanton knot Floer homology. Our arguments rely on general properties of sutured Floer theories and apply also in the Heegaard Floer and monopole Floer settings, where many of our results were already known. Our main result is the connected sum formula for instanton knot Floer homology. An extension of this result proves the oriented skein exact triangle for the minus version of instanton knot Floer homology. Finally, we derive a new model of the minus version of instanton knot Floer homology, which takes the form of a free, finitely generated chain complex over a polynomial ring, as opposed to a direct limit. This construction is new to all of the Floer theories. We explore these results also in the context of Heegaard Floer theory as well.