English

Liftable braids and the coloured braid groupoid

Geometric Topology 2025-08-08 v1 Combinatorics Group Theory Representation Theory

Abstract

When π:Σ~D2\pi:\widetilde{\Sigma}\rightarrow D^2 is a cover of the disc branched over nn marked points, the braid group BnB_n acts on the disc by homeomorphisms fixing the marked points setwise. A braid β\beta \textit{lifts} if there is a homeomorphism β~Mod(Σ~)\widetilde{\beta}\in \textit{Mod}(\widetilde{\Sigma}) such that βπ=πβ~\beta\circ \pi=\pi\circ \widetilde{\beta}. For arbitrary covers, the \textit{lifting homomorphism} taking β\beta to β~\widetilde{\beta} is only defined on a proper subgroup of the braid group. This paper extends the lifting homomorphism to a map from a coloured braid groupoid to a mapping class groupoid for all simple covers of the disc. We characterise the lift of every coloured braid, recovering the classical lifting homomorphism on the liftable braid group.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.05146,
  title  = {Liftable braids and the coloured braid groupoid},
  author = {Joan Licata and Vera Vértesi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.05146},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

22 pages, 13 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:38:38.654Z