Related papers: Brunnian planar braids and simplicial groups
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 give a presentation by generators and relations of a certain monoid generating a subgroup of index two in the group Aut(F_2) of automorphisms of the rank two free group F_2 and show that it can be realized as a monoid in the group B_4 of…
We study several natural decision problems in braid groups and Artin groups. We classify the Artin groups with decidable submonoid membership problem in terms of the non-existence of certain forbidden induced subgraphs of the defining…
We begin with a brief sketch of what is known and conjectured concerning braided monoidal 2-categories and their applications to 4d topological quantum field theories and 2-tangles (surfaces embedded in 4-dimensional space). Then we give…
Barnette's Conjecture claims that all cubic, 3-connected, planar, bipartite graphs are Hamiltonian. We give a translation of this conjecture into the matching-theoretic setting. This allows us to relax the requirement of planarity to give…
We prove that an arbitrary right-angled Artin group $G$ admits a quasi-isometric group embedding into a right-angled Artin group defined by the opposite graph of a tree. Consequently, $G$ admits quasi-isometric group embeddings into a pure…
We investigate the rational cohomology of the quotient of (generalized) braid groups by the commutator subgroup of the pure braid groups. We provide a combinatorial description of it using isomorphism classes of certain families of graphs.…
We consider collections of disjoint simple closed curves in a compact orientable surface which decompose the surface into pairs of pants. The isotopy classes of such curve systems form the vertices of a 2-complex, whose edges correspond to…
We call a knot in the 3-sphere $SU(2)$-simple if all representations of the fundamental group of its complement which map a meridian to a trace-free element in $SU(2)$ are binary dihedral. This is a generalisation of being a 2-bridge knot.…
This paper investigates the exotic phenomena exhibited by links of disconnected surfaces with boundary that are properly embedded in the 4-ball. Our main results provide two different constructions of exotic pairs of surface links that are…
We compute explicitly the Khovanov polynomials (using the computer program from katlas.org) for the two simplest families of the satellite knots, which are the twisted Whitehead doubles and the two-strand cables. We find that a quantum…
We prove that if g and n are integers at least two, then the abstract commensurator of the braid group with n strands on a closed orientable surface of genus g is naturally isomorphic to the extended mapping class group of a compact…
We consider braids on $m+n$ strands, such that the first $m$ strands are trivially fixed. We denote the set of all such braids by $B_{m,n}$. Via concatenation $B_{m,n}$ acquires a group structure. The objective of this paper is to find a…
We observe that the singular part of the second bounded cohomology group of boundedly simple groups is trivial.
Towards the study of the representation theory of any dihedral Artin group B, we build rational morphisms from B to the group of invertible elements of the associated infinitesimal braids algebra. For this we build analogues of Drinfeld…
We prove by explicit construction that graph braid groups and most surface groups can be embedded in a natural way in right-angled Artin groups, and we point out some consequences of these embedding results. We also show that every…
Let K be a knot in an integral homology 3-sphere and let B denote the 2-fold branched cover of the integral homology sphere branched along K. We construct a map from the slice of characters with trace free along meridians in the SL(2,…
The main result of this article is that any braided (resp. annular, planar) diagram group $D$ splits as a short exact sequence $1 \to R \to D \to S \to 1$ where $R$ is a subgroup of some right-angled Artin group and $S$ a subgroup of…
An $n$-plat 1-knot is one isotopic to the plat closure of some $2n$-braid, which is also called an $n$-bridge 1-knot. Schubert classified 2-bridge 1-knots by considering their double branched covers which are homeomorphic to lens spaces. A…
A simple braid is a positive braid that can be drawn so that any two strands cross at most once. We prove that as $n \to \infty$, the proportion of simple braids on $n$ strands that have positive topological entropy tends toward $100\%$.…