The Lawrence-Krammer representation is a quantization of the symmetric square of the Burau representation

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 introduce a generalisation $LH_n$ of the ordinary Hecke algebras informed by the loop braid group $LB_n$ and the extension of the Burau representation thereto. The ordinary Hecke algebra has many remarkable arithmetic and representation theoretic properties, and many applications. We show that $LH_n$ has analogues of several of these properties. In particular we %introduce consider a class of local (tensor space/functor) representations of the braid group derived from a me...

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.

We categorify the coefficients of the Burau representation matrix using elementary geometrical methods. We show the faithfulness of this categorification in the sense that it detects the trivial braid.

The Burau representation is a fundamental bridge between the braid group and diverse other topics in mathematics. A 1974 question of Birman asks for a description of the image; in this paper we give a "strong approximation" to the answer. Since a 1984 paper of Squier it has been known that the Burau representation preserves a certain Hermitian form. We show that the Burau image is dense in this unitary group relative to a topology induced by a naturally-occurring filtration. ...

Burau representation of the Artin braid group remains as one of the very important representations for the braid group. Partly, because of its connections to the Alexander polynomial which is one of the first and most useful invariants for knots and links. In the present work, we show that interesting representations of braid group could be achieved using a simple and intuitive approach, where we simply analyse the path of strands in a braid and encode the over-crossings, und...

It is known that there are braids $\alpha$ and $\beta$ in the braid group $B_4$, such that the group $\langle \alpha, \beta \rangle$ is a fee subgroup \cite{7}, which contains the kernel $K$ of the Burau map $\rho_4 : B_4 \to G L\left(3, \mathbb{Z}[t,t^{-1}]\right)$ \cite{6}, \cite{4}. In this paper we will prove that $K$ is subgroup of $G=\langle \tau, \Delta \rangle $, where $\tau $ and $\Delta $ are fourth and square roots of the generator $\theta$ of the center $Z$ of the...

We establish strong constraints on the kernel of the (reduced) Burau representation $\beta_4:B_4\to \text{GL}_3\left(\mathbb{Z}\left[q^{\pm 1}\right]\right)$ of the braid group $B_4$. We develop a theory to explicitly determine the entries of the Burau matrices of braids in $B_4$, and this is an important step toward demonstrating that $\beta_4$ is faithful (a longstanding question posed in the 1930s). The theory is based on a novel combinatorial interpretation of $\beta_4\le...

We give an exposition of the work of Bigelow and Krammer who proved that the Artin braid groups are linear.

This note tells you how to construct a k(n)-dimensional family of (isomorphism classes of) irreducible representations of dimension n for the three string braid group B_3, where k(n) is an admissible function of your choosing; for example take k(n) = [ n/2 ] +1 as in arXiv:0803.2778 and arXiv:0803.2785.