Related papers: Lifting Braids

The mixed braid groups are the subgroups of Artin braid groups whose elements preserve a given partition of the base points. We prove that the centralizer of any braid can be expressed in terms of semidirect and direct products of mixed…

In this paper we characterize primitive branched coverings with minimal defect over the projective plane with respect to the properties decomposable and indecomposable. This minimality is achieved when the covering surface is also the…

We consider finite-sheeted, regular, possibly branched covering spaces of compact surfaces with boundary and the associated liftable and symmetric mapping class groups. In particular, we classify when either of these subgroups coincides…

Given a knot in $S^3$, one can associate to it a surface diffeomorphism in two different ways. First, an arbitrary knot in $S^{3}$ can be represented by braids, which can be thought of as diffeomorphisms of punctured disks. Second, if the…

Loi and Piergallini showed that a smooth compact, connected $4$-manifold $X$ with boundary admits a Stein structure if and only if $X$ is a simple branched cover of a $4$-disk $D^4$ branched along a positive braided surface $S$ in a bidisk…

Braids can be represented geometrically as laminations of punctured disks. The geometric complexity of a braid is the minimal complexity of a lamination that represents it, and tight laminations are representatives of minimal complexity.…

This article presents an alternate way to prove a result originally proven by Harvey, Kawamuro, and Plamenvskaya in \cite{HaKaPl}. We accomplish this by explicitly constructing an overtwisted disk in the $p$-fold cyclic branched cover of…

We study simple branched coverings of degree d of the 2- and 3- dimensional sphere branched over oriented links. We demonstrate how to use braid charts to develop embeddings of these into $S^k \times D^2$ for $k=2,3 when $d=2,3$. This is an…

This paper concerns on linked periodic orbits of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the $2$-disc in the sense of Gambaudo. We interpret the linking of periodic orbits by using their induced braids. Then based on the forcing relation…

We compute the generalized Lefschetz number of orientation-preserving self-homeomorphisms of a compact punctured disk, using the fact that homotopy classes of these homeomorphisms can be identified with braids. This result is applied to…

We prove a lifting theorem for odd Frattini covers of finite groups. Using this, we characterize solvable groups and more generally p-solvable groups in terms of containing a triple of elements of distinct prime power orders with product 1.…

In this paper we give an algorithm for solving a main case of the conjugacy problem in the braid groups. We also prove that half-twists satisfy a special root property which allows us to reduce the solution for the conjugacy problem in…

We show that simple coverings of B^4 branched over ribbon surfaces up to certain local ribbon moves bijectively represent orientable 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies up to handle sliding and addition/deletion of cancelling handles. As a…

We show that the automorphism group of the disk complex is isomorphic to the handlebody group. Using this, we prove that the outer automorphism group of the handlebody group is trivial.

This paper is concerned with detecting when a closed braid and its axis are 'mutually braided' in the sense of Rudolph. It deals with closed braids which are fibred links, the simplest case being closed braids which present the unknot. The…

A left orderable completely metrizable topological group is exhibited containing Artin's braid group on infinitely many strands. The group is the mapping class group (rel boundary) of the closed unit disk with a sequence of interior…

We solve the isomorphism problem for braid groups on trees with $n = 4$ or 5 strands. We do so in three main steps, each of which is interesting in its own right. First, we establish some tools and terminology for dealing with computations…

In this note we show that any homomorphism from a pure surface braid group to a torsion-free hyperbolic group either has a cyclic image or factors through a forgetful map. This extends and gives a new proof of an earlier result of the…

We consider translation surfaces with poles on surfaces. We shall prove that any finite group appears as the automorphism group of some translation surface with poles. As a direct consequence we obtain the existence of structures achieving…

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…