Related papers: The Braids on your Blanket

In this note, we prove a lower bound for the positive kinkiness of a closed braid which we then use to derive an estimate for the positive kinkiness of a link in terms of its Seifert system. As an application, we show that certain pretzel…

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.

The Kontsevich integral $Z$ associates to each braid $b$ (or more generally knot $k$) invariants $Z_i(b)$ lying in finite dimensional vector spaces, for $i = 0, 1, 2, ...$. These values are not yet known, except in special cases. The…

We use some Lie group theory and Budney's unitarization of the Lawrence-Krammer representation, to prove that for generic parameters of definite form the image of the representation (also on certain types of subgroups) is dense in the…

This article is an exposition of certain connections between the braid groups, classical homotopy groups of the 2-sphere, as well as Lie algebras attached to the descending central series of pure braid groups arising as Vassiliev invariants…

We study homological representations of mapping class groups, including the braid groups. These arise from the twisted homology of certain configuration spaces, and come in many different flavours. Our goal is to give a unified general…

In this paper we introduce distinct approaches to loop braid groups, a generalisation of braid groups, and unify all the definitions that have appeared so far in literature, with a complete proof of the equivalence of these definitions.…

In this paper we introduce the tied links, i.e. ordinary links provided with some ties between strands. The motivation for introducing such objects originates from a diagrammatical interpretation of the defining generators of the so-called…

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…

We show that a non-trivial, non-central normal subgroup of the braid groups contains a braid whose closure is a hyperbolic knot with arbitrary large genus. This shows that non-faithfulness of a quantum representation implies that the…

A 2-dimensional braid over an oriented surface-knot $F$ is presented by a graph called a chart on a surface diagram of $F$. We consider 2-dimensional braids obtained by an addition of 1-handles equipped with chart loops. We introduce moves…

We define an annular concordance invariant and study its properties. When specialized to braids, this invariant gives bounds on band rank. We introduce a modified chain complex to reformulate the invariant. Then, by focusing on a special…

Laundry surfaces for closed braid diagrams are presented. It is shown that braid diagrams are characterized by linking matrices obtained by lifting cycles from these surfaces. Oriented link types are then characterized by equivalence…

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…

We introduce multi-tribrackets, algebraic structures for region coloring of diagrams of knots and links with different operations at different kinds of crossings. In particular we consider the case of component multi-tribrackets which have…

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 define invariants of words in arbitrary groups, measuring how letters in a word are interleaving, perfectly detecting the dimension series of a group. These are the letter-braiding invariants. On free groups, braiding invariants coincide…

We give examples of knots with some unusual properties of the crossing number of positive diagrams or strand number of positive braid representations. In particular we show that positive braid knots may not have positive minimal (strand…

We give a general procedure that provides, given any particular pretzel link, a braid whose closure is the pretzel link. Moreover, we manage to give a specific braid word in terms of the entries of the pretzel link.

For an oriented surface link $S$, we can take a satellite construction called a 2-dimensional braid over $S$, which is a surface link in the form of a covering over $S$. We demonstrate that 2-dimensional braids over surface links are useful…