Kauffman bracket skein module of the connected sum of two solid tori

We determine the structure of the Kauffman bracket skein module of the connected sum of two genus one handlebodies over the ring of Laurent polynomials $\mathbb{Z}[q^{\pm 1}]$, thereby proving a conjecture posed by the first and third authors. Our results lay the groundwork for computing the Kauffman bracket skein module of arbitrary connected sums over the ring $\mathbb{Z}[q^{\pm 1}]$.