Two Dimensional Representations of the Braid Group B3 and its Burau Representation Squared

As the 3-string braid group B(3) and the modular group PSL(2,Z) are both of wild representation type one cannot expect a full classification of all their finite dimensional simple representations. Still, one can aim to describe 'most' irreducible representations by constructing for each d-dimensional irreducible component X of the variety iss(n,B(3)) classifying the isomorphism classes of semi-simple n-dimensional representations of B(3) an explicit minimal etale rational map...

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...

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 construct a [(n+1)/2]+1 parameters family of irreducible representations of the Braid group B_3 in arbitrary dimension n\in N, using a q-deformation of the Pascal triangle. This construction extends in particular results by S.P.Humphries [8], who constructed representations of the braid group B_3 in arbitrary dimension using the classical Pascal triangle. E.Ferrand [7] obtained an equivalent representation of B_3 by considering two special operators in the space C^n[X]. Sl...

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.

Motivated by physical and topological applications, we study representations of the group $\mathcal{LB}_3$ of motions of $3$ unlinked oriented circles in $\mathbb{R}^3$. Our point of view is to regard the three strand braid group $\mathcal{B}_3$ as a subgroup of $\mathcal{LB}_3$ and study the problem of extending $\mathcal{B}_3$ representations. We introduce the notion of a \emph{standard extension} and characterize $\mathcal{B}_3$ representations admiting such an extension. ...

We establish relations between both the classical and the dual Garside structures of the braid group and the Burau representation. Using the classical structure, we formulate a non-vanishing criterion for the Burau representation of the 4-strand braid group. In the dual context, it is shown that the Burau representation for arbitrary braid index is injective when restricted to the set of \emph{simply-nested braids}.

This work discusses the open problem of the faithfulness of the reduced Burau representation for $n=4$. Birman showed that in order to prove this representation is faithful, it is sufficient to find two matrices $A$ and $B$ that generate a free group of rank 2. Breidze and Traczyk proved that $A^{3}$ and $B^{3}$ generate the free group of rank 2. In our work, we show that $A^{2}$ and $B^{2}$ generate the free group of rank 2.

The singularities of the representation variety of $B_3$ are studied, where $B_3$ is the knot group on 3 strands. Specifically, we determine which semisimple representations are smooth points of this variety.

In a recent paper here arXiv:1508.0005 it is shown that irreducible representations of the three string braid group $B_3$ of dimensions $\leq 5$ extend to representations of the 3-component loop braid group $LB_3$. Further, an explicit $6$-dimensional irreducible $B_3$-representation is given that does not extend. In this note we give a necessary and sufficient condition, in all dimensions, on the components of irreducible representations of the modular group $\Gamma$ such th...