Representations of braid groups

We give a formula of the colored Alexander invariant in terms of the homological representation of the braid groups which we call truncated Lawrence's representation. This formula generalizes the famous Burau representation formula of the Alexander polynomial.

The Lawrence-Krammer representation was used in $2000$ to show the linearity of the braid group. The problem had remained open for many years. The fact that the Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid group is reducible for some complex values of its two parameters is now known, as well as the complete description of these values under some restrictions on one of the parameters. It is also known that when the representation is reducible, the action on a proper invariant ...

This is an introduction to the braid groups, as presented in the summer school and workshop on braid groups at the National University of Singapore in June 2007.

Braid groups are an important and flexible tool used in several areas of science, such as Knot Theory (Alexander's theorem), Mathematical Physics (Yang-Baxter's equation) and Algebraic Geometry (monodromy invariants). In this note we will focus on their algebraic-geometric aspects, explaining how the representation theory of higher genus braid groups can be used to produce interesting examples of projective surfaces defined over the field of complex numbers.

We consider exact sequences and lower central series of surface braid groups and we explain how they can prove to be useful for obtaining representations for surface braid groups. In particular, using a completely algebraic framework, we describe the notion of extension of a representation introduced and studied recently by An and Ko and independently by Blanchet.

In this paper we describe the structure of a group of conjugating automorphisms $C_n$ of free group and prove that this structure is similar to the structure of a braid group $B_n$ with $n>1$ strings. We find the linear representation of group $C_n$. Also we prove that the braid group $B_n(S^2)$ of 2--sphere, mapping class group M(0,n) of the $n$--punctured 2--sphere and the braid group $B_3(P^2)$ of the projective plane are linear. Using result of J. Dyer, E. Formanek, E. Gr...

A connection is made between the Krammer representation and the Birman-Murakami-Wenzl algebra. Inspired by a dimension argument, a basis is found for a certain irrep of the algebra, and relations which generate the matrices are found. Following a rescaling and change of parameters, the matrices are found to be identical to those of the Krammer representation. The two representations are thus the same, proving the irreducibility of one and the faithfulness of the other.

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...

This paper gives a process for finding discrete real specializations of sesquilinear representations of the braid groups using Salem numbers. This method is applied to the Jones and BMW representations, and some details on the commensurability of the target groups are given.

\begin{abstract} The reduced Burau representation is a natural action of the braid group $B_n$ on the first homology group $H_1({\tilde{D}}_n;\mathbb{Z})$ of a suitable infinite cyclic covering space ${\tilde{D}}_n$ of the $n$--punctured disc $D_n$. It is known that the Burau representation is faithful for $n\le 3$ and that it is not faithful for $n\ge 5$. We use forks and noodles homological techniques and Bokut--Vesnin generators to analyze the problem for $n=4$. We present...