Related papers: A Note on Topologically-Trivial Braids
This article is a survey on the braid groups, the Artin groups, and the Garside groups. It is a presentation, accessible to non-experts, of various topological and algebraic aspects of these groups. It is also a report on three points of…
We give a simple topological construction of the Burau representations of the loop braid groups. There are four versions: defined either on the non-extended or extended loop braid groups, and in each case there is an unreduced and a reduced…
We extend Howie's characterization of alternating knots to give a topological characterization of toroidally alternating knots, which were defined by Adams. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a knot to be toroidally…
Twisted knot theory, introduced by M.O. Bourgoin, is a generalization of virtual knot theory. It naturally yields the notion of a twisted braid, which is closely related to the notion of a virtual braid due to Kauffman. In this paper, we…
Traditionally, knot theorists have considered projections of knots where there are two strands meeting at every crossing. A multi-crossing is a crossing where more than two strands meet at a single point, such that each strand bisects the…
We define invariants of braids rather than invariants of conjugacy classes of braids. For any pure three-braid we give effective upper and lower bounds for these invariants. This is done in terms of a natural syllable decomposition of the…
Inverse braid monoid describes a structure on braids where the number of strings is not fixed. So, some strings of initial $n$ may be deleted. In the paper we show that many properties and objects based on braid groups may be extended to…
In previous papers, the author realized the following principle for many knot theories: if a knot diagram is complicated enough then it reproduces itself, i.e., is a subdiagram of any other diagram equivalent to it. This principle is…
A pair of surgeries on a knot is called purely cosmetic if the pair of resulting 3-manifolds are homeomorphic as oriented manifolds. Using recent work of Hanselman, we show that (nontrivial) knots which arise as the closure of a 3-stranded…
Contraction of an edge merges its end points into a new vertex which is adjacent to each neighbor of the end points of the edge. An edge in a $k$-connected graph is {\em contractible} if its contraction does not result in a graph of lower…
We compare two crossed homomorphisms on a braid group, one defined diagrammatically and the other defined algebraically. We show that these crossed homomorphisms are essentially the same, and compute them in detail for simple braids, namely…
A 2-dimensional braid over an oriented surface-knot $F$ is presented by a graph called a chart on a surface diagram of $F$. We consider 2-dimensional braids obtained by an addition of 1-handles equipped with chart loops. We introduce moves…
Braid theory is used to calcualte the topological entropy of data from the belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction, the results agree well with one-dimensional theory to the order of approximation considered.
We show that reducible braids which are, in a Garside-theoretical sense, as simple as possible within their conjugacy class, are also as simple as possible in a geometric sense. More precisely, if a braid belongs to a certain subset of its…
Periodic solutions of the planar $N$-body problem determine braids through the trajectory of $N$ bodies. Braid types can be used to classify periodic solutions. According to the Nielsen-Thurston classification of surface automorphisms,…
We prove the existence of pure braids with arbitrarily many strands which are small, i.e. they contain no closed incompressible surface in the complement which is not boundary parallel. This implies the existence of irreducible non-Haken…
After defining reduced minimum braid word and criteria for a braid family representative, different braid family representatives are derived, and a correspondence between them and families of knots and links given in Conway notation is…
Deciding whether a family of disjoint line segments in the plane can be linked into a simple polygon (or a simple polygonal chain) by adding segments between their endpoints is NP-hard.
We describe symmetries of the braid monodromy decomposition for a class of plane curves defined over reals including the real curves with no real points and proving new divisibility relations for Alexander invariants of such curves.
Computing a minimum-area planar straight-line drawing of a graph is known to be NP-hard for planar graphs, even when restricted to outerplanar graphs. However, the complexity question is open for trees. Only a few hardness results are known…