Related papers: New presentations of surface braid groups
The conjugacy problem in braid groups has been extensively studied, particularly from an algorithmic perspective. Established methods based on Garside structures, such as initial summit sets and super summit sets, provide effective…
We find surface subgroups in certain one-relator groups with torsion and use this to deduce a profinite criterion for a word in the free group to be primitive.
The Burau representation of the braid group can be used to recover the Alexander polynomial of the closure of a braid. We define twisted Burau maps and use them to compute twisted Alexander polynomials.
We give an algorithm which computes a presentation for a subgroup, denoted $\AM_{g,1,p}$, of the automorphism group of a free group. It is known that $\AM_{g,1,p}$ is isomorphic to the mapping-class group of an orientable genus-$g$ surface…
This paper is devoted to the proof of a structural theorem, concerning certain homomorphic images of Artin braid group on $n$ strands in finite symmetric groups. It is shown that any one of these permutation groups is an extension of the…
We go back and forth between, on the one hand, presentations of arithmetic and Kac-Moody groups and, on the other hand, presentations of profinite groups, deducing along the way new results on both.
We show that the morphisms from the braid group with n strands in the mapping class group of a surface with a possible non empty boundary, assuming that its genus is smaller or equal to n/2 are either cyclic morphisms (their images are…
We describe the most efficient solutions to the word problem of Artin's braid group known so far, i.e., in other words, the most efficient solutions to the braid isotopy problem, including the Dynnikov method, which could be especially…
Given a knot or link in the form of plat closure of a braid, we describe an algorithm to obtain a braid representing the same knot or link with the standard closure, and vice-versa. We analyze the three cases of knots and links: in…
Let M be a compact, connected surface, possibly with a finite set of points removed from its interior. Let d,n be positive integers, and let N be a d-fold covering space of M. We show that the covering map induces an embedding of the n-th…
This work presents an approach towards the representation theory of the braid groups $B_n$. We focus on finite-dimensional representations over the field of Laurent series which can be obtained from representations of infinitesimal braids,…
We exhibit classes of groups in which the word problem is uniformly solvable but in which there is no algorithm that can compute finite presentations for finitely presentable subgroups. Direct products of hyperbolic groups, groups of…
The topological underpinnings are presented for a new algorithm which answers the question: `Is a given knot the unknot?' The algorithm uses the braid foliation technology of Bennequin and of Birman and Menasco. The approach is to consider…
The purpose of this paper is to survey the structure of closed and transitive transformation groups acting on a closed surface. In particular, we prove a number of relations between groups acting on the sphere that contain the rotation…
These are lecture notes from a lecture series given at CIRM in the Fall 2023. They give a down-to-earth introduction to Khovanov and Seidel's categorical representation of Artin-Tits groups, emphasizing the fact that it is all explicitly…
We investigate braid group representations associated with unitary braided vector spaces, focusing on a conjecture that such representations should have virtually abelian images in general and finite image provided the braiding has finite…
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…
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…
For a general surface $M$ and an arbitrary braid $\alpha$ from the surface braid group $B_{n-1}(M)$ we study the system of equations $d_1\beta=\cdots=d_{n}\beta=\alpha, $ where operation $d_i$ is deleting of $i$-th strand. We obtain that if…
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…