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

We study the representations of the commutator subgroup of the braid group with n strands in the symmetric group of degree r. Motivated by some experimental results, we conjecture that for n>r, every such representation is trivial.

This paper will appear in the Santa Cruz proceedings. An overview of the braid group techniques in the theory of algebraic surfaces, from Zariski to the latest results, is presented. An outline of the Van Kampen algorithm for computing…

In this paper, we classify homomorphisms from the braid group of $n$ strands to the mapping class group of a genus $g$ surface. In particular, we show that when $g<n-2$, all representations are either cyclic or standard. Our result is sharp…

We give various estimates of the minimal number of self-intersections of a nontrivial element of the kth term of the lower central series and derived series of the fundamental group of a surface. As an application, we obtain a new…

We describe the lower algebraic $K$-theory of the integral group ring of both the pure and full braid groups of the real projective plane $\mathbb{R}P^2$ with $3$ strings, as well as that of the integral group ring of the mapping class…

Let $M$ be the disk or a compact, connected surface without boundary different from the sphere $S^2$ and the real projective plane $\mathbb{R}P^2$, and let $N$ be a compact, connected surface (possibly with boundary). It is known that the…

Herein we prove that if $M$ is a compact oriented Riemann surface of genus $g$, and $M^{[n]}$ is the classifying space of $n$ distinct, unordered points on $M$, then the kernel of the map $\pi_1(M^{[n]})\to H_1(M)$ is generated by…

We argue that for a smooth surface S, considered as a ramified cover over the projective plane branched over a nodal-cuspidal curve B one could use the structure of the fundamental group of the complement of the branch curve to understand…

We determine precisely when the branching coefficients arising from the restriction of irreducible representations of the symmetric group $S_n$ to the dihedral subgroup $D_n$ are nonzero, and we establish uniform linear lower bounds outside…

We prove that the pure braid groups on closed, orientable surfaces are bi-orderable, and that the pure braid groups on closed, non-orientable surfaces have generalized torsion, thus they are not bi-orderable.

Let S be a principally embedded sl_2 subalgebra in sl_n for n > 2. A special case of results of the third author and Gregg Zuckerman implies that there exists a positive integer b(n) such that for any finite-dimensional irreducible sl_n…

This is a review article on the Bennequin-Birman-Menasco machinery for studying embedded incompressible surfaces in 3-space via their `braid foliations'. Two cases are investigated: case (1) The surface has non-empty boundary; the boundary…

We classify the irreducible projective representations of symmetric and alternating groups of minimal possible and second minimal possible dimensions, and get a lower bound for the third minimal dimension. On the way we obtain some new…

We construct several families of embeddings of braid groups into mapping class groups of orientable and non-orientable surfaces and prove that they induce the trivial map in stable homology in the orientable case, but not so in the…

By evaluating the Burau representation at t=-1, we obtain a symplectic representation of the braid group. We define the congruence subgroups of the braid group to be the preimages of the principal congruence subgroups of the symplectic…

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 consider the braid groups $\mathbf{B}_n(X)$ on finite simplicial complexes $X$, which are generalizations of those on both manifolds and graphs that have been studied already by many authors. We figure out the relationships between…

We provide new group presentations for surface braid groups which are positive. We study some properties of such presentations and we solve the conjugacy problem in a particular case.

For every group genetic code with finite number of generating and at most with one defining relation we introduce the braid group of this genetic code. This construction includes the braid group of Euclidean plane, the braid groups of…

In this paper we give new presentations of the braid groups and the pure braid groups of a closed surface. We also give an algorithm to solve the word problem in these groups, using the given presentations.