The Lawrence-Krammer-Bigelow Representations of the Braid Groups via Quantum SL_2

This is the first part of a series of two papers aiming to construct a categorification of the braiding on tensor products of Verma modules, and in particular of the Lawrence--Krammer--Bigelow representations. \\ In this part, we categorify all tensor products of Verma modules and integrable modules for quantum $\mathfrak{sl_2}$. The categorification is given by derived categories of dg versions of KLRW algebras which generalize both the tensor product algebras of Webster, an...

We extend Lawrence's representations of the braid groups to relative homology modules, and we show that they are free modules over a Laurent polynomials ring. We define homological operators and we show that they actually provide a representation for an integral version for $U_q \mathfrak{sl}(2)$. We suggest an isomorphism between a given basis of homological modules and the standard basis of tensor products of Verma modules, and we show it to preserve the integral ring of co...

We define a family of the braid group representations via the action of the $R$-matrix (of the quasitriangular extension) of the restricted quantum $\mathfrak{sl}(2)$ on a tensor power of a simple projective module. This family is an extension of the Lawrence representation specialized at roots of unity. Although the center of the braid group has finite order on the specialized Laurence representations, this action is faithful for our extension.

In the present paper we study structural aspects of certain quotients of braid groups and virtual braid groups. In particular, we construct and study linear representations $B_n\to {\rm GL}_{n(n-1)/2}\left(\mathbb{Z}[t^{\pm1}]\right)$, $VB_n\to {\rm GL}_{n(n-1)/2}\left(\mathbb{Z}[t^{\pm1}, t_1^{\pm1},t_2^{\pm1},\ldots, t_{n-1}^{\pm1}]\right)$ which are connected with the famous Lawrence-Bigelow-Krammer representation. It turns out that these representations are faithful repre...

We show that Lawrence's representation and linear representations from quantum sl_2 called generic highest weight vectors detect the dual Garside length of braids in a simple and natural way. That is, by expressing a representation as a matrix over a Laurent polynomial ring using certain natural basis, the span of the variable is equal to the constant multiples of the dual Garside length.

The Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid groups recently came to prominence when it was shown to be faithful by myself and Krammer. It is an action of the braid group on a certain homology module $H_2(\tilde{C})$ over the ring of Laurent polynomials in $q$ and $t$. In this paper we describe some surfaces in $\tilde{C}$ representing elements of homology. We use these to give a new proof that $H_2(\tilde{C})$ is a free module. We also show that the $(n-2,2)$ representat...

Given two nonzero complex parameters $l$ and $m$, we construct by the mean of knot theory a matrix representation of size $\chl$ of the BMW algebra of type $A_{n-1}$ with parameters $l$ and $m$ over the field $\Q(l,r)$, where $m=\unsurr-r$. As a representation of the braid group on $n$ strands, it is equivalent to the Lawrence-Krammer representation that was introduced by Lawrence and Krammer to show the linearity of the braid groups. We prove that the Lawrence-Krammer repres...

For each odd prime power $q$ with $q\ge 5$ and $4\mid q-1$, we investigate the structure of the representation category of the quantum double of ${\rm SL}(2,q)$, determining its tensor products and braidings.

We propose a family of new representations of the braid groups on surfaces that extend linear representations of the braid groups on a disc such as the Burau representation and the Lawrence-Krammer-Bigelow representation.

A very popular problem on braid groups has recently been solved by Bigelow and Krammer, namely, they have found a faithful linear representation for the braid group B_n. In their papers, Bigelow and Krammer suggested that their representation is the monodromy representation of a certain fibration. Our goal in this paper is to understand this monodromy representation using standard tools from the theory of hyperplane arrangements. In particular, we prove that the representatio...