Related papers: Lower central series, surface braid groups, surjec…

We consider the subspace of the homology of a covering space spanned by lifts of simple closed curves. Our main result is the existence of unbranched covers of surfaces where this is a proper subspace. More generally, for a fixed finite…

We give a new infinite family of group homomorphisms from the braid group B_k to the symmetric group S_{mk} for all k and m \geq 2. Most known permutation representations of braids are included in this family. We prove that the…

Fix an arbitrary compact orientable surface with a boundary and consider a uniform bipartite random quadrangulation of this surface with $n$ faces and boundary component lengths of order $\sqrt n$ or of lower order. Endow this…

We give a complete classification to when a finite group of outer automorphisms preserves a bi-order on a non-abelian free group and bi-orderable surface groups. We also give another new criterion for an outer automorphism of $F_n$ induced…

Garside-theoretical solutions to the conjugacy problem in braid groups depend on the determination of a characteristic subset of the conjugacy class of any given braid, e.g. the sliding circuit set. It is conjectured that, among rigid…

We introduce and study a family of groups $\mathbf{BB}_n$, called the blocked-braid groups, which are quotients of Artin's braid groups $\mathbf{B}_n$, and have the corresponding symmetric groups $\Sigma_n$ as quotients. They are defined by…

The space of monic squarefree complex polynomials has a stratification according to the multiplicities of the critical points. We introduce a method to study these strata by way of the infinite-area translation surface associated to the…

E. Artin described all irreducible representations of the braid group B_k to the symmetric group S(k). We strengthen some of his results and, moreover, exhibit a complete picture of homomorphisms of B_k to S(n) for n<2k+1. We show that the…

This thesis is devoted to the application of random matrix theory to the study of random surfaces, both discrete and continuous; special emphasis is placed on surface boundaries and the associated boundary conditions in this formalism. In…

We study the restriction to the symmetric group, $\mc{S}_n$ of the adjoint representation of $\mt{GL}_n(\C)$. We determine the irreducible constituents of the space of symmetric as well as the space of skew-symmetric $n\times n$ matrices as…

We consider two systems of curves $(\alpha_1,...,\alpha_m)$ and $(\beta_1,...,\beta_n)$ drawn on a compact two-dimensional surface $M$ with boundary. Each $\alpha_i$ and each $\beta_j$ is either an arc meeting the boundary of $M$ at its two…

We study convergent sequences of Baumslag-Solitar groups in the space of marked groups. We prove that BS(m,n) --> F_2 for |m|,|n| --> \infty and BS(1,n) --> Z \wr Z for |n| --> \infty. For m fixed, |m|>1, we show that the sequence…

We study both bosonic and supersymmetric (p,q) minimal models coupled to Liouville theory using the ground ring and the various branes of the theory. From the FZZT brane partition function, there emerges a unified, geometric description of…

We prove new conditional bounds on the the $m$-torsion of class groups of number fields of any fixed degree, for $m=2$, $3$, $4$, and $5$. Our methods first recast the problem in the language of class groups of Galois modules, which allows…

The crossing matrix of a braid on $N$ strands is the $N\times N$ integer matrix with zero diagonal whose $i,j$ entry is the algebraic number (positive minus negative) of crossings by strand $i$ over strand $j$ . When restricted to the…

Let $\Sigma_g$ denote the closed orientable surface of genus $g$ and fix an arbitrary simplicial triangulation of $\Sigma_g$. We construct and study a natural surjective group homomorphism from the surface braid group on $n$ strands on…

We prove that every infinite sequence of skew-symmetric or symmetric matrices M_1, M_2, ... over a fixed finite field must have a pair M_i, M_j (i<j) such that M_i is isomorphic to a principal submatrix of the Schur complement of a…

Following Lazard, we study the $N$-series of a group $G$ and their associated graded Lie algebras. The main examples we consider are the lower central series (LCS), Stallings' rational and mod-$q$ versions, and Zassenhaus' mod-$p$ version…

Let $\Gamma_{g,1}^m$ be the mapping class group of the orientable surface $\Sigma_{g,1}^m$ of genus $g$ with one parametrised boundary curve and $m$ permutable punctures; when $m=0$ we omit it from the notation. Let…

We study knots in $\mathbb{S}^3$ obtained by the intersection of a minimal surface in $\mathbb{R}^4$ with a small 3-sphere centered at a branch point. We construct examples of new minimal knots. In particular we show the existence of…