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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.…
We define a measure of "complexity" of a braid which is natural with respect to both an algebraic and a geometric point of view. Algebraically, we modify the standard notion of the length of a braid by introducing generators $\Delta\_{ij}$,…
We define the \emph{visual complexity} of a plane graph drawing to be the number of basic geometric objects needed to represent all its edges. In particular, one object may represent multiple edges (e.g., one needs only one line segment to…
We establish a braid monodromy representation of functions satisfying an algebraic equation containing three terms (trinomial equation). We follow global analytic continuation of the roots to a trinomial algebraic equation that are…
The visual complexity of a graph drawing is defined as the number of geometric objects needed to represent all its edges. In particular, one object may represent multiple edges, e.g., one needs only one line segment to draw two collinear…
The notion of a braid is generalized into two and three dimensions. Two-dimensional braids are described by braid monodromies or graphics called charts. In this paper we introduce the notion of curtains, and show that three-dimensional…
We show that the problem of constructing a real rational knot of a reasonably low degree can be reduced to an algebraic problem involving the pure braid group: expressing an associated element of the pure braid group in terms of the…
Recent work suggests that topological features of certain quantum gravity theories can be interpreted as particles, matching the known fermions and bosons of the first generation in the Standard Model. This is achieved by identifying…
We classify homomorphisms from the braid group on $n$ strands to the pure mapping class group of a nonoriantable surface of genus $g$. For $n\ge 14$ and $g\le 2\lfloor{n/2}\rfloor+1$ every such homomorphism is either cyclic, or it maps…
We study geometric presentations of braid groups for particles that are constrained to move on a graph, i.e. a network consisting of nodes and edges. Our proposed set of generators consists of exchanges of pairs of particles on junctions of…
Braid groups are an important and flexible tool used in several areas of science, such as Knot Theory (Alexander's theorem), Mathematical Physics (Yang-Baxter's equation) and Algebraic Geometry (monodromy invariants). In this note we will…
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…
Computing the number of realizations of a minimally rigid graph is a notoriously difficult problem. Towards this goal, for graphs that are minimally rigid in the plane, we take advantage of a recently published algorithm, which is the…
A geometric grid class consists of those permutations that can be drawn on a specified set of line segments of slope \pm1 arranged in a rectangular pattern governed by a matrix. Using a mixture of geometric and language theoretic methods,…
Many problems in computational geometry are not stated in graph-theoretic terms, but can be solved efficiently by constructing an auxiliary graph and performing a graph-theoretic algorithm on it. Often, the efficiency of the algorithm…
The topological model for quantum computation is an inherently fault-tolerant model built on anyons in topological phases of matter. A key role is played by the braid group, and in this survey we focus on a selection of ways that the…
We design an algorithm writing down presentations of graph braid groups. Generators are represented in terms of actual motions of robots moving without collisions on a given graph. A key ingredient is a new motion planning algorithm whose…
In the paper we give a survey on braid groups and subjects connected with them. We start with the initial definition, then we give several interpretations as well as several presentations of these groups. Burau presentation for the pure…
In this article, we give a numerical algorithm to compute braid groups of curves, hyperplane arrangements, and parameterized system of polynomial equations. Our main result is an algorithm that determines the cross-locus and the generators…
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…