Related papers: Some Problems on Knots, Braids, and Automorphism G…
We construct `structure invariants' of a one-ended, finitely presented group that describe the way in which the factors of its JSJ decomposition over two-ended subgroups fit together. For groups satisfying two technical conditions, these…
Various spaces of symmetries of a structure are naturally endowed with both an algebraic and a topological structure. For example, the automorphism group of a structure is, on top of being a group, a topological group when equipped with the…
This is an introduction for algebraists to the theory of algebras and Hopf algebras in braided categories. Such objects generalise super-algebras and super-Hopf algebras, aswell as colour-Lie algebras. Basic facts about braided categories C…
These are notes based on a series of talks that the author gave at the "Interactions between hyperbolic geometry and quantum groups" conference held at Columbia University in June of 2009.
These notes expand upon our lectures on {\em profinite rigidity} at the international colloquium on randomness, geometry and dynamics, organised by TIFR Mumbai at IISER Pune in January 2024. We are interested in the extent to which groups…
We study a wide range of homologically-defined representations of surface braid groups and of mapping class groups of surfaces, including the Lawrence-Bigelow representations of the classical braid groups. These representations naturally…
A result of Malyutin shows that a random walk on the mapping class group gives rise to an element whose fractional Dehn twist coefficient is large or small enough. We show that this leads to several properties of random 3-manifolds and…
We provide new examples of acylindrically hyperbolic groups arising from actions on simplicial trees. In particular, we consider amalgamated products and HNN-extensions, 1-relator groups, automorphism groups of polynomial algebras,…
We present a braid-theoretic approach to combinatorially computing knot Floer homology. To a knot or link K, which is braided about the standard disk open book decomposition for (S^3,\xi_std), we associate a corresponding multi-pointed nice…
We characterize those Lie groups, and algebraic groups over a local field of characteristic zero, whose first reduced L^p-cohomology is zero for all p>1, extending a result of Pansu. As an application, we obtain a description of…
We explore algebraic characterizations of 2-knots whose associated knot manifolds fibre over lower-dimensional orbifolds, and consider also some issues related to the groups of higher-dimensional fibred knots.
The anomaly of non-invertible higher-form symmetries is determined by the braiding of topological operators implementing them. In this paper, we study a method to classify braidings on topological line and surface operators by leveraging…
We give uniform, explicit, and simple face-pairing descriptions of all the branched cyclic covers of the 3-sphere, branched over two-bridge knots. Our method is to use the bi-twisted face-pairing constructions of Cannon, Floyd, and Parry;…
The automorphisms of free groups with boundaries form a family of groups A_{n,k} closely related to mapping class groups, with the standard automorphisms of free groups as A_{n,0} and (essentially) the symmetric automorphisms of free groups…
We discuss 3-manifolds which are cyclic coverings of the 3-sphere, branched over 2-bridge knots and links. Different descriptions of these manifolds are presented: polyhedral, Heegaard diagram, Dehn surgery and coloured graph constructions.…
We investigate several conjectures in geometric topology by assembling computer data obtained by studying weaving knots, a doubly infinite family $W(p,n)$ of examples of hyperbolic knots. In particular, we compute some important polynomial…
Within the framework of braided or quasisymmetric monoidal categories braided Q-supersymmetry is investigated, where Q is a certain functorial isomorphism in a braided symmetric monoidal category. For an ordinary (co-)quasitriangular Hopf…
Braid combing is a procedure defined by Emil Artin to solve the word problem in braid groups for the first time. It is well-known to have exponential complexity. In this paper, we use the theory of straight line programs to give a…
Homomorphic expansions are combinatorial invariants of knotted objects, which are universal in the sense that all finite-type (Vassiliev) invariants factor through them. Homomorphic expansions are also important as bridging objects between…
We extend the list of known band structure topologies to include a large family of hyperbolic nodal links and knots, occurring both in conventional Hermitian systems where their stability relies on discrete symmetries, and in the…