531 research outputs found
Braid groups of imprimitive complex reflection groups
We obtain new presentations for the imprimitive complex reflection groups of
type and their braid groups for . Diagrams
for these presentations are proposed. The presentations have much in common
with Coxeter presentations of real reflection groups. They are positive and
homogeneous, and give rise to quasi-Garside structures. Diagram automorphisms
correspond to group automorphisms. The new presentation shows how the braid
group is a semidirect product of the braid group of affine type
and an infinite cyclic group. Elements of are
visualized as geometric braids on strings whose first string is pure and
whose winding number is a multiple of . We classify periodic elements, and
show that the roots are unique up to conjugacy and that the braid group
is strongly translation discrete.Comment: published versio
Periodic elements in Garside groups
Let be a Garside group with Garside element , and let
be the minimal positive central power of . An element is said
to be 'periodic' if some power of it is a power of . In this paper, we
study periodic elements in Garside groups and their conjugacy classes.
We show that the periodicity of an element does not depend on the choice of a
particular Garside structure if and only if the center of is cyclic; if
for some nonzero integer , then is conjugate to
; every finite subgroup of the quotient group is
cyclic.
By a classical theorem of Brouwer, Ker\'ekj\'art\'o and Eilenberg, an
-braid is periodic if and only if it is conjugate to a power of one of two
specific roots of . We generalize this to Garside groups by showing
that every periodic element is conjugate to a power of a root of .
We introduce the notions of slimness and precentrality for periodic elements,
and show that the super summit set of a slim, precentral periodic element is
closed under any partial cycling. For the conjugacy problem, we may assume the
slimness without loss of generality. For the Artin groups of type , ,
, and the braid group of the complex reflection group of type
, endowed with the dual Garside structure, we may further assume the
precentrality.Comment: The contents of the 8-page paper "Notes on periodic elements of
Garside groups" (arXiv:0808.0308) have been subsumed into this version. 27
page
The dual braid monoid
We construct a new monoid structure for Artin groups associated with finite
Coxeter systems. This monoid shares with the classical positive braid monoid a
crucial algebraic property: it is a Garside monoid. The analogy with the
classical construction indicates there is a ``dual'' way of studying Coxeter
systems, where the pair (W,S) is replaced by (W,T), with T the set of all
reflections. In the type A case, we recover the monoid constructed by
Birman-Ko-LeeComment: 42 pages. Major revision, many new result
Braids: A Survey
This article is about Artin's braid group and its role in knot theory. We set
ourselves two goals: (i) to provide enough of the essential background so that
our review would be accessible to graduate students, and (ii) to focus on those
parts of the subject in which major progress was made, or interesting new
proofs of known results were discovered, during the past 20 years. A central
theme that we try to develop is to show ways in which structure first
discovered in the braid groups generalizes to structure in Garside groups,
Artin groups and surface mapping class groups. However, the literature is
extensive, and for reasons of space our coverage necessarily omits many very
interesting developments. Open problems are noted and so-labelled, as we
encounter them.Comment: Final version, revised to take account of the comments of readers. A
review article, to appear in the Handbook of Knot Theory, edited by W.
Menasco and M. Thistlethwaite. 91 pages, 24 figure
On the cycling operation in braid groups
The cycling operation is a special kind of conjugation that can be applied to
elements in Artin's braid groups, in order to reduce their length. It is a key
ingredient of the usual solutions to the conjugacy problem in braid groups. In
their seminal paper on braid-cryptography, Ko, Lee et al. proposed the {\it
cycling problem} as a hard problem in braid groups that could be interesting
for cryptography. In this paper we give a polynomial solution to that problem,
mainly by showing that cycling is surjective, and using a result by Maffre
which shows that pre-images under cycling can be computed fast. This result
also holds in every Artin-Tits group of spherical type.
On the other hand, the conjugacy search problem in braid groups is usually
solved by computing some finite sets called (left) ultra summit sets
(left-USS), using left normal forms of braids. But one can equally use right
normal forms and compute right-USS's. Hard instances of the conjugacy search
problem correspond to elements having big (left and right) USS's. One may think
that even if some element has a big left-USS, it could possibly have a small
right-USS. We show that this is not the case in the important particular case
of rigid braids. More precisely, we show that the left-USS and the right-USS of
a given rigid braid determine isomorphic graphs, with the arrows reversed, the
isomorphism being defined using iterated cycling. We conjecture that the same
is true for every element, not necessarily rigid, in braid groups and
Artin-Tits groups of spherical type.Comment: 20 page
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