English

The Lawrence--Krammer representation is unitary

Geometric Topology 2007-05-23 v1 Representation Theory

Abstract

We show that the Lawrence--Krammer representation is unitary. We explicitly present the non-singular matrix representing the sesquilinear pairing invariant under the action. We show that reversing the orientation of a braid is equivalent to the transposition of its Lawrence--Krammer matrix followed by a certain conjugation. As corollaries it is shown that the characteristic polynomial of the Lawrence--Krammer matrix is invariant under substitution of its variables with their inverses up to multiplication by units, and is not a complete conjugacy invariant for braids.

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0202214,
  title  = {The Lawrence--Krammer representation is unitary},
  author = {Won Taek Song},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0202214},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

16 pages, 53 pictures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T16:43:25.606Z