Faithfulness of the Lawrence representation of braid groups

These are lecture notes prepared for a minicourse given at the Cimpa Research School "Algebraic and geometric aspects of representation theory", held in Curitiba, Brazil in March 2013. The purpose of the course is to provide an introduction to the study of representations of braid groups. Three general classes of representations of braid groups are considered: homological representations via mapping class groups, monodromy representations via the Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov connec...

While much is known about the faithfulness of the Burau representation, the problem remains open for the Gassner representation for every $B_n$ with $n\geq 4$. We first find the definition of the Colored-Burau representation of Ainshel, Ainshel, Goldfeld, and Lemieux and we show that this is equivalent, when restricted to the pure braid subgroup, to the Gassner representation. The methods of Abdulrahim and Knudson require analysis within the lower central series of a free sub...

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...

This article is a survey on the braid groups, the Artin groups, and the Garside groups. It is a presentation, accessible to non-experts, of various topological and algebraic aspects of these groups. It is also a report on three points of the theory: the faithful linear representations, the cohomology, and the geometrical representations.

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 ...

We give a method to produce representations of the braid group $B_n$ of $n-1$ generators ($n\leq \infty$). Moreover, we give sufficient conditions over a non unitary representation for being of this type. This method produces examples of irreducible representations of finite and infinite dimension.

We construct two families of representations of the braid group $B_n$ by considering conjugation actions on congruence subgroups of $GL_{n-1}(Z[t^{\pm 1},q^{\pm 1}])$. We show that many of these representations are faithful modulo the center of $B_n$.

We construct representations of the braid groups B_n on n strands on free Z[q,q^-1,s,s^-1]-modules W_{n,l} using generic Verma modules for an integral version of quantum sl_2. We prove that the W_{n,2} are isomorphic to the faithful Lawrence Krammer Bigelow representations of B_n after appropriate identification of parameters of Laurent polynomial rings by constructing explicit integral bases and isomorphism. We also prove that the B_n-representations W_{n,l} are irreducible ...

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.

For $n\geq 2$, let $G_n$ be a group and let $\rho: B_n\rightarrow G_n$ be a representation of the braid group $B_n$. For a field $\mathbb{K}$ and $a,b,c\in \mathbb{K}$, Valerij G. Bardakov extend the representation $\rho$ to a family of representations $\Phi_{a,b,c}:SM_n \rightarrow \mathbb{K}[G_n]$ of the singular braid monoid $SM_n$, where $\mathbb{K}[G_n]$ is the group algebra of $G_n$ over $\mathbb{K}$. In this paper, we study the faithfulness of the family of representat...