Related papers: A Note on Pure Braids and Link Concordance
We describe hierarchies of exact string backgrounds obtained as non-Abelian cosets of orthogonal groups and having a space--time realization in terms of gauged WZW models. For each member in these hierarchies, the target-space backgrounds…
Identification of string junction states of pure SU(2) Seiberg-Witten theory as B-branes wrapped on a Calabi-Yau manifold in the geometric engineering limit is discussed. The wrapped branes are known to correspond to objects in the bounded…
In this paper we study abelian and metabelian quotients of braid groups on oriented surfaces with boundary components. We provide group presentations and we prove rigidity results for these quotients arising from exact sequences related to…
Classical knot theory deals with {\em diagrams} and {\em invariants}. By means of horizontal {\em trisecants}, we construct a new theory of classical braids with invariants valued in {\em pictures}. These pictures are closely related to…
Virtual knots arise in the study of Gauss diagrams and Vassiliev invariants of usual knots. Virtual braids correspond naturally to virtual knots. We consider the group of virtual braids on n strings VB_n and its Burau representation, in…
We consider the topological complexity of subgroups of Artin's braid group consisting of braids whose associated permutations lie in some specified subgroup of the symmetric group. We give upper and lower bounds for the topological…
We introduce a new combinatorial method to encode knots and links with applications to knot invariants. Clasp diagrams defined in this paper are combinatorial blueprints for building knot diagrams out of full twists on two strings rather…
Kearton observed that mutation can change the concordance class of a knot. A close examination of his example reveals that it is of 4-genus 1 and has a mutant of 4-genus 0. The first goal of this paper is to construct examples to show that…
We consider a special class of framed links that arise from the hexatangle. Such links are introduced in [arXiv:0807.1677], which was also analyzed when the 3-manifold obtained after performing integral Dehn surgery on closed pure 3-braids…
Braided groups and braided matrices are novel algebraic structures living in braided or quasitensor categories. As such they are a generalization of super-groups and super-matrices to the case of braid statistics. Here we construct braided…
Recent progress in string theory has led to a reformulation of quantum-group polynomial invariants for knots and links into new polynomial invariants whose coefficients can be understood in topological terms. We describe in detail how to…
In the early 1980's Mike Freedman showed that all knots with trivial Alexander polynomial are topologically slice (with fundamental group Z). This paper contains the first new examples of topologically slice knots. In fact, we give a…
This paper is the first of a two part series devoted to describing relations between congruence and crystallographic braid groups. We recall and introduce some elements belonging to congruence braid groups and we establish some…
The necklace braid group $\mathcal{NB}_n$ is the motion group of the $n+1$ component necklace link $\mathcal{L}_n$ in Euclidean $\mathbb{R}^3$. Here $\mathcal{L}_n$ consists of $n$ pairwise unlinked Euclidean circles each linked to an…
Motivated by the recently introduced concept of a pseudosymmetric braided monoidal category, we define the pseudosymmetric group PS_n, as the quotient of the braid group B_n by the relations \sigma_i\sigma_{i+1}^{-1}\sigma_i=\sigma…
Motivated by the work of Birman about the relationship between mapping class groups and braid groups, we discuss the relationship between the orbit braid group and the equivariant mapping class group on the closed surface $M$ with a free…
A crown diagram of a smooth, closed oriented 4-manifold can be thought of as the projection of a link in the product of a closed surface and the circle, with chords in the circle direction connecting the strands of each crossing. This paper…
In this paper we construct a homomorphism of the affine braid group $Br_n^{aff}$ in the convolution algebra of the equivariant matrix factorizations on the space $\overline{\mathcal{X}}_2=\mathfrak{b}_n\times GL_n\times\mathfrak{n}_n$…
In this note we show that ribbon concordance forms a partial ordering on the set of knots, answering a question of Gordon. The proof makes use of representation varieties of the knot groups to $SO(N)$ and relations between them induced by a…
As proved by Hedden and Ording, there exist knots for which the Ozsvath-Szabo and Rasmussen smooth concordance invariants, tau and s, differ. The Hedden-Ording examples have nontrivial Alexander polynomials and are not topologically slice.…