Parameters for which the Lawrence-Krammer representation is reducible

We introduce tangles of type $E_n$ and construct a representation of the Birman-Murakami-Wenzl algebra (BMW algebra) of type $E_6$. As a representation of the Artin group of type $E_6$, this representation is equivalent to the faithful Cohen-Wales representation of type $E_6$ that was used to show the linearity of the Artin group of type $E_6$. We find a reducibility criterion for this representation and complex values of the parameters for which the algebra is not semisimple...

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 account of the fundamental relationships (non-degenerate pairings, embeddings, isomorphisms) between the many different flavours of homological representations. Our motivating examples are the Lawrence-Bigelow representations of the braid group...

In this note, a new class of representations of the braid groups $B_{N}$ is constructed. It is proved that those representations contain three kinds of irreducible representations: the trivial (identity) one, the Burau one, and an $N$-dimensional one. The explicit form of the $N$-dimensional irreducible representation of the braid group $B_{N}$ is given here.

The recent proof by Bigelow and Krammer that the braid groups are linear opens the possibility of applications to the study of knots and links. It was proved by the first author and Menasco that any closed braid representative of the unknot can be systematically simplified to a round planar circle by a sequence of exchange moves and reducing moves. In this paper we establish connections between the faithfulness of the Krammer-Lawrence representation and the problem of recogni...

We study the problem of deciding whether or not the image of an irreducible representation of the braid group $\B_3$ of degree $\leq 5$ has finite image if we are only given the eigenvalues of a generator. We provide a partial algorithm that determines when the images are finite or infinite in all but finitely many cases, and use these results to study examples coming from quantum groups. Our technique uses two classification theorems and the computational group theory packag...

In this paper, we prove that the cyclotomic BMW algebras B2p+1,n are cellular in the sense of [16]. We also classify the irreducible B2p+1,nmodules over a field.

We consider quotients of the group algebra of the $3$-string braid group $B_3$ by $p$-th order generic polynomial relations on the elementary braids. In cases $p=2,3,4,5$ these quotient algebras are finite dimensional. We give semisimplicity criteria for these algebras and present explicit formulas for all their irreducible representations.

We give a complete classification of simple representations of the braid group B_3 with dimension $\leq 5$ over any algebraically closed f ield. In particular, we prove that a simple d-dimensional representation $\rho: B_3 \to GL(V)$ is determined up to isomorphism by the eigenvalues $\lambda_1, \lambda_2, ..., \lambda_d$ of the image of the generators for d=2,3 and a choice of a $\delta=\sqrt{\det \rho(\sigma_1)}$ for d=4 or a choice of $\delta=\sqrt[5]{\det \rho(\sigma_1)}$...

Let $C_n$ be the group of conjugating automorphisms. We study the representation $\rho$ of $C_n$, an extension of Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid group $B_n$, defined by Valerij G. Bardakov. As Bardakov proved that the representation $\rho$ is unfaithful for $n \geq 5$, the cases $n=3,4$ remain open. In our work, we make attempts towards the faithfulness of $\rho$ in the case $n=3$.

We give a method to construct new self-adjoint representations of the braid group. In particular, we give a family of irreducible self-adjoint representations of dimension arbitrarily large. Moreover we give sufficient conditions for a representation to be constructed with this method.