English

The Relaxation Normal Form of Braids is Regular

Combinatorics 2017-10-13 v4 Geometric Topology

Abstract

Braids can be represented geometrically as laminations of punctured disks. The geometric complexity of a braid is the minimal complexity of a lamination that represents it, and tight laminations are representatives of minimal complexity. These laminations give rise to a normal form of braids, via a relaxation algorithm. We study here this relaxation algorithm and the associated normal form. We prove that this normal form is regular and prefix-closed. We provide an effective construction of a deterministic automaton that recognizes this normal form.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1507.03248,
  title  = {The Relaxation Normal Form of Braids is Regular},
  author = {Vincent Jugé},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.03248},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

38 pages, 27 figures