Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 March 2021
A spectral sequence is established whose $E_{2}$ page is Bar-Natan's variant of Khovanov homology and which abuts to a deformation of instanton homology for knots and links. This spectral sequence arises as a specialization of a spectral sequence whose $E_{2}$ page is a characteristic-2 version of $F_{5}$ homology in Khovanov's classification.
The work of the first author was supported by the National Science Foundation through NSF grants DMS-1405652 and DMS-1707924. The work of the second author was supported by NSF grants DMS-1406348 and DMS-1808794, and by a grant from the Simons Foundation, grant number 503559 TSM.