From a group $H$ and a non-trivial element $h$ of $H$, we define a representation $ρ: B_n \to \Aut(G)$, where $B_n$ denotes the braid group on $n$ strands, and $G$ denotes the free product of $n$ copies of $H$. Such a representation shall be called the Artin type representation associated to the pair $(H,h)$. The goal of the present paper is to study different aspects of these representations.
Firstly, we associate to each braid $β$ a group $Γ_{(H,h)} (β)$ and prove that the operator $Γ_{(H,h)}$ determines a group invariant of oriented links. We then give a topological construction of the Artin type representations and of the link invariant $Γ_{(H,h)}$, and we prove that the Artin type representations are faithful. The last part of the paper is dedicated to the study of some semidirect products $G \rtimes_ρB_n$, where $ρ: B_n \to \Aut(G)$ is an Artin type representation. In particular, we show that $G \rtimes_ρB_n$ is a Garside group if $H$ is a Garside group and $h$ is a Garside element of $H$.
We show that the span of the variable $q$ in the Lawrence-Krammer-Bigelow representation matrix of a braid is equal to the twice of the dual Garside length of the braid, as was conjectured by Krammer. Our proof is close in spirit to Bigelow's geometric approach. The key observation is that the dual Garside length of a braid can be read off a certain labeling of its curve diagram.
Benardete, Gutierrez and Nitecki showed an important result which relates the geometrical properties of a braid, as a homeomorphism of the punctured disk, to its algebraic Garside-theoretical properties. Namely, they showed that if a braid sends a curve to another curve, then the image of this curve after each factor of the left normal form of the braid (with the classical Garside structure) is also standard. We provide a new simple, geometric proof of the result by Benardete-Gutierrez-Nitecki, which can be easily adapted to the case of the dual Garside structure of braid groups, with the appr…
Several distinct Garside monoids having torus knot groups as groups of fractions are known. For $n,m\geq 2$ two coprime integers, we introduce a new Garside monoid $\mathcal{M}(n,m)$ having as Garside group the $(n,m)$-torus knot group, thereby generalizing to all torus knot groups a construction that we previously gave for the $(n,n+1)$-torus knot group. As a byproduct, we obtain new Garside structures for the braid groups of a few exceptional complex reflection groups of rank two. Analogous Garside structures are also constructed for a few additional braid groups of exceptional complex refle…
Garside-theoretical solutions to the conjugacy problem in braid groups depend on the determination of a characteristic subset of the conjugacy class of any given braid, e.g. the sliding circuit set. It is conjectured that, among rigid braids with a fixed number of strands, the size of this set is bounded by a polynomial in the length of the braids. In this paper we suggest a more precise bound: for rigid braids with $N$ strands and of Garside length $L$, the sliding circuit set should have at most $C\cdot L^{N-2}$ elements, for some constant $C$. We construct a family of braids which realise t…
An element in Artin's braid group B_n is said to be periodic if some power of it lies in the center of B_n. In this paper we prove that all previously known algorithms for solving the conjugacy search problem in B_n are exponential in the braid index n for the special case of periodic braids. We overcome this difficulty by putting to work several known isomorphisms between Garside structures in the braid group B_n and other Garside groups. This allows us to obtain a polynomial solution to the original problem in the spirit of the previously known algorithms. This paper is the third in a series…
We give a new method to compute the centralizer of an element in Artin braid groups and, more generally, in Garside groups. This method, together with the solution of the conugacy problem given by the authors in a previous paper, are two main steps for solving conjugacy systems, thus breaking recently discovered cryptosystems based in braid groups. We also present the result of our computations, where we notice that our algorithm yields surprisingly small generating sets for the centralizers.
We show that reducible braids which are, in a Garside-theoretical sense, as simple as possible within their conjugacy class, are also as simple as possible in a geometric sense. More precisely, if a braid belongs to a certain subset of its conjugacy class which we call the stabilized set of sliding circuits, and if it is reducible, then its reducibility is geometrically obvious: it has a round or almost round reducing curve. Moreover, for any given braid, an element of its stabilized set of sliding circuits can be found using the well-known cyclic sliding operation. This leads to a polynomial …
In this paper we study the reduction curves of a braid, and how they can be used to decompose the braid into simpler ones in a precise way, which does not correspond exactly to the decomposition given by Thurston theory. Then we study how a cyclic sliding (which is a particular kind of conjugation) affects the normal form of a braid with respect to the normal forms of its components. Finally, using the above methods, we provide the example of a family of braids whose sets of sliding circuits (hence ultra summit sets) have exponential size with respect to the number of strands and also with res…
In connection with the emerging theory of Garside categories, we develop the notions of a left-Garside category and of a locally left-Garside monoid. In this framework, the connection between the self-distributivity law LD and braids amounts to the result that a certain category associated with LD is a left-Garside category, which projects onto the standard Garside category of braids. This approach leads to a realistic program for establishing the Embedding Conjecture of [Dehornoy, Braids and Self-distributivity, Birkhauser (2000), Chap. IX].
We present a new algorithm to solve the conjugacy problem in Artin braid groups, which is faster than the one presented by Birman, Ko and Lee. This algorithm can be applied not only to braid groups, but to all Garside groups (which include finite type Artin groups and torus knot groups among others).
In this paper, we obtain Groebner-Shirshov (non-commutative Gröbner) bases for the braid groups in the Birman-Ko-Lee generators enriched by new ``Garside word" $δ$. It gives a new algorithm for getting the Birman-Ko-Lee Normal Form in the braid groups, and thus a new algorithm for solving the word problem in these groups.
We give a new presentation of the braid group $B$ of the complex reflection group $G(e,e,r)$ which is positive and homogeneous, and for which the generators map to reflections in the corresponding complex reflection group. We show that this presentation gives rise to a Garside structure for $B$ with Garside element a kind of generalised Coxeter element, and hence obtain solutions to the word and conjugacy problems for $B$.
We describe a new presentation for the complex reflection groups of type $(e,e,r)$ and their braid groups. A diagram for this presentation is proposed. The presentation is a monoid presentation which is shown to give rise to a Garside structure. A detailed study of the combinatorics of this structure leads us to describe it as post-classical.
In this paper, we give a Groebner-Shirshov basis of the braid group $B_{n+1}$ in the Artin--Garside generators. As results, we obtain a new algorithm for getting the Garside normal form, and a new proof that the braid semigroup $B^+{n+1}$ is the subsemigroup in $B_{n+1}$.
We construct a class of Garside groupoid structures on the pure braid groups, one for each function (called labelling) from the punctures to the integers greater than 1. The object set of the groupoid is the set of ball decompositions of the punctured disk; the labels are the perimeters of the regions. Our construction generalises Garside's original Garside structure, but not the one by Birman-Ko-Lee. As a consequence, we generalise the Tamari lattice ordering on the set of vertices of the associahedron.
We describe how an Ore category with a Garside family can be used to construct a classifying space for its fundamental group(s). The construction simultaneously generalizes Brady's classifying space for braid groups and the Stein--Farley complexes used for various relatives of Thompson's groups. It recovers the fact that Garside groups have finite classifying spaces. We describe the categories and Garside structures underlying certain Thompson groups. The Zappa--Szép product of categories is introduced and used to construct new categories and groups from known ones. As an illustration of our m…
When Daan Krammer and Stephen Bigelow independently proved that braid groups are linear, they used the Lawrence-Krammer-Bigelow representation for generic values of its variables q and t. The t variable is closely connected to the traditional Garside structure of the braid group and plays a major role in Krammer's algebraic proof. The q variable, associated with the dual Garside structure of the braid group, has received less attention. In this article we give a geometric interpretation of the q portion of the LKB representation in terms of an action of the braid group on the space of non-dege…
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}.
We describe new types of normal forms for braid monoids, Artin-Tits monoids, and, more generally, for all monoids in which divisibility has some convenient lattice properties (``locally Garside monoids''). We show that, in the case of braids, one of these normal forms coincides with the normal form introduced by Burckel and deduce that the latter can be computed easily. This approach leads to a new, simple description for the standard ordering (``Dehornoy order'') of Bn in terms of that of B(n-1), and to a quadratic upper bound for the complexity of this ordering.
In this paper a relation between iterated cyclings and iterated powers of elements in a Garside group is shown. This yields a characterization of elements in a Garside group having a rigid power, where 'rigid' means that the left normal form changes only in the obvious way under cycling and decycling. It is also shown that, given X in a Garside group, if some power X^m is conjugate to a rigid element, then m can be bounded above by ||Δ||^3. In the particular case of braid groups, this implies that a pseudo-Anosov braid has a small power whose ultra summit set consists of rigid elements. This s…
Recently, there have been several progresses for the conjugacy search problem (CSP) in Garside groups, especially in braid groups. All known algorithms for solving this problem use a sort of exhaustive search in a particular finite set such as the super summit set and the ultra summit set. Their complexities are proportional to the size of the finite set, even when there exist very short conjugating elements. However, ultra summit sets are very large in some cases especially for reducible braids and periodic braids. Some possible approaches to resolve this difficulty would be either to use dif…
We show that Lawrence's representation and linear representations from quantum sl_2 called generic highest weight vectors detect the dual Garside length of braids in a simple and natural way. That is, by expressing a representation as a matrix over a Laurent polynomial ring using certain natural basis, the span of the variable is equal to the constant multiples of the dual Garside length.
We define geodesic normal forms for the general series of complex reflection groups G(e,e,n). This requires the elaboration of a combinatorial technique in order to explicitly determine minimal word representatives of the elements of G(e,e,n) over the generating set of the presentation of Corran-Picantin. Using these geodesic normal forms, we construct intervals in G(e,e,n) that are lattices. This gives rise to interval Garside groups. We determine which of these groups are isomorphic to the complex braid group B(e,e,n) and get a complete classification. For the other Garside groups that appea…
On the model of simple braids, defined to be the left divisors of Garside's elements $Δ\_n$ in the monoid $B\_\infty^+$ , we investigate simple elements in Thompson's monoid $F^+$ and in a larger monoid $H^+$ that is a hybrid of $B\_\infty^+$ and $F^+$ : in both cases, we count how many simple elements left divide the right lcm of the first n -- 1 atoms, and characterize their normal forms in terms of forbidden factors. In the case of $H^+$, a generalized Pascal triangle appears.
In this work we present a natural surjective map from rigid braids in B_3 (in Garside sense) to SL_2(N). This map provides an upper and a lower bound for the dilatation factor of a pseudo-Anosov 3-strand braid. These bounds only depend on the canonical length of the classical Garside structure of B_3.
The submonoid of the $3$-strand braid group $\mathcal{B}_3$ generated by $σ_1$ and $σ_1 σ_2$ is known to yield an exotic Garside structure on $\mathcal{B}_3$. We introduce and study an infinite family $(M_n)_{n\geq 1}$ of Garside monoids generalizing this exotic Garside structure, i.e., such that $M_2$ is isomorphic to the above monoid. The corresponding Garside group $G(M_n)$ is isomorphic to the $(n,n+1)$-torus knot group-which is isomorphic to $\mathcal{B}_3$ for $n=2$ and to the braid group of the exceptional complex reflection group $G_{12}$ for $n=3$. This yields a new Garside structure …
We present a simple construction which associates to every Garside group a metric space, called the additional length complex, on which the group acts. These spaces share important features with curve complexes: they are $δ$-hyperbolic, infinite, and typically locally infinite graphs. We conjecture that, apart from obvious counterexamples, additional length complexes are always of infinite diameter. We prove this conjecture for the classical example of braid groups $(B_n,Δ)$; moreover, in this framework, reducible and periodic braids act elliptically, and at least some pseudo-Anosov braids act…
Garside families have recently emerged as a relevant context for extending results involving Garside monoids and groups, which themselves extend the classical theory of (generalized) braid groups. Here we establish various characterizations of Garside families, that is, equivalently, various criteria for establishing the existence of normal decompositions of a certain type.
We define pseudo-Garside groups and prove a theorem about them parallel to Garside's result on the word problem for the usual braid groups. The main novelty is that the set of simple elements can be infinite. We introduce a group B=B(Z^n) which we call the braid group of Z^n, and which bears some vague resemblance to mapping class groups. It is to GL(n,Z) what the braid group is to the symmetric group S_n. We prove that B is a pseudo-Garside group. We give a small presentation for B(Z^n) assuming one for B(Z^3) is given.
In this article, we introduce the notion of cycling operations of arbitrary order in Garside groups, which is a full generalization of the cycling and decycling operations. Theoretically, this notion together with other related concepts provides a context in which various definitions and arguments concerning Garside groups are unified and simplified as well as improved. Practically, it yields a new algorithm which has a considerably improved performance on solving the conjugacy problem of reducible braids.
The cycling operation endows the super summit set $S_x$ of any element $x$ of a Garside group $G$ with the structure of a directed graph $Γ_x$. We establish that the subset $U_x$ of $S_x$ consisting of the circuits of $Γ_x$ can be used instead of $S_x$ for deciding conjugacy to $x$ in $G$, yielding a faster and more practical solution to the conjugacy problem for Garside groups. Moreover, we present a probabilistic approach to the conjugacy search problem in Garside groups. The results are likely to have implications for the security of recently proposed cryptosystems based on the hardness of …
We construct a quasi-Garside monoid structure for the free group. This monoid should be thought of as a dual braid monoid for the free group, generalising the constructions by Birman-Ko-Lee and by the author of new Garside monoids for Artin groups of spherical type. Conjecturally, an analog construction should be available for arbitrary Artin groups and for braid groups of well-generated complex reflection groups.
In [J.Birman, V.Gebhardt, J.Gonzalez-Meneses, Conjugacy in Garside groups I: cyclings, powers and rigidity] authors asked: (open question 2) is the size of USS of a rigid pseudo-Anosov braid is bounded above by some polynomial in the number of strands and the braid length? We answer this question in the negative.
Let $G$ be a Garside group with Garside element $Δ$, and let $Δ^m$ be the minimal positive central power of $Δ$. An element $g\in G$ is said to be 'periodic' if some power of it is a power of $Δ$. 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 $G$ is cyclic; if $g^k=Δ^{ka}$ for some nonzero integer $k$, then $g$ is conjugate to $Δ^a$; every finite subgroup of the quotient group $G/<Δ^m>$ is cyclic. By a classical theor…
Garside's results and the existense of the greedy normal form for braids are shown to be true for the singular braid monoid. An analogue of the presentation of J. S. Birman, K. H. Ko and S. J. Lee for the braid group is also obtained for this monoid.
The Garside group, as a generalization of braid groups and Artin groups of finite types, is defined as the group of fractions of a Garside monoid. We show that the semidirect product of Garside monoids is a Garside monoid. We use the semidirect product $\mathbb Z\ltimes G^n$ of the infinite cyclic group $\mathbb Z$ and the cartesian product $G^n$ of a Garside group $G$ to study the properties of roots and powers of elements in $G$. The main result is an estimate of the growth of the minimal word-length of powers of elements in Garside groups, when the generating set is the set of simple elemen…
We expound the properties of ribbons in a setting which is general enough to encompass spherical Artin monoids and dual braid monoids of well-generated complex reflection groups. We generalize to our setting results on parabolic subgroups of spherical Artin group of Godelle, Cumplido, and others.
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.
Garside groups are a natural lattice-theoretic generalisation of the braid groups and spherical type Artin--Tits groups. Here we show that the class of Garside groups is closed under some free products with cyclic amalgamated subgroups. We deduce that every tree product of infinite cyclic groups is a Garside group. Moreover, we study those cyclic HNN extensions of Garside groups that are Garside groups as well. Using a theorem of Pietrowski, we conclude this paper by stating that a non-cyclic one-relator group is Garside if and only if its centre is nontrivial.
A graph is Helly if every family of pairwise intersecting combinatorial balls has a nonempty intersection. We show that weak Garside groups of finite type and FC-type Artin groups are Helly, that is, they act geometrically on Helly graphs. In particular, such groups act geometrically on spaces with convex geodesic bicombing, equipping them with a nonpositive-curvature-like structure. That structure has many properties of a CAT(0) structure and, additionally, it has a combinatorial flavor implying biautomaticity. As immediate consequences we obtain new results for FC-type Artin groups (in parti…
We prove that an Artin-Tits group of type $\tilde C$ is the group of fractions of a Garside monoid, analogous to the known dual monoids associated with Artin-Tits groups of spherical type and obtained by the "generated group" method. This answers, in this particular case, a general question on Artin-Tits groups, gives a new presentation of an Artin-Tits group of type $\tilde C$, and has consequences for the word problem, the computation of some centralizers or the triviality of the center. A key point of the proof is to show that this group is a group of fixed points in an Artin-Tits group of …
Garside calculus is the common mechanism that underlies a certain type of normal form for the elements of a monoid, a group, or a category. Originating from Garside's approach to Artin's braid groups, it has been extended to more and more general contexts, the latest one being that of categories and what are called Garside families. One of the benefits of this theory is to lead to algorithms solving effectively the naturally occurring problems, typically the Word Problem. The aim of this paper is to present and solve these algorithmic questions in the new extended framework.
Define a Garside monoid to be a cancellative monoid where right and left lcm's exist and that satisfy additional finiteness assumptions, and a Garside group to be the group of fractions of a Garside monoid. The family of Garside groups contains the braid groups, all spherical Artin groups, and various generalizations previously considered (In particular, the Garside groups considered in [1,7] are special cases of those considered here; the latter had been called "small Gaussian" in earlier works; the name has been changed in order to uniformize the terminology with works by Bessis, Charney, Mi…
Inverse braid monoid describes a structure on braids where the number of strings is not fixed. So, some strings of initial $n$ may be deleted. In the paper we show that many properties and objects based on braid groups may be extended to the inverse braid monoids. Namely we prove an inclusion into a monoid of partial monomorphisms of a free group. This gives a solution of the word problem. Another solution is obtained by an approach similar to that of Garside. We give also the analogues of Artin presentation with two generators and Sergiescu graph-presentations.
In his seminal paper on complex reflection arrangements, Bessis introduces a Garside structure for the braid group of a well-generated irreducible complex reflection group. Using this Garside structure, he establishes a strong connection between regular elements in the reflection group, and roots of the "full twist" element of the pure braid group. He then suggests that it would be possible to extend the conclusion of this theorem to centralizers of regular elements in well-generated groups. In this paper we give a positive answer to this question and we show moreover that these results hold f…
We find finite presentations for the automorphism group of the Artin pure braid group and the automorphism group of the pure braid group associated to the full monomial group.
M. Picantin introduced the notion of Garside groups of spindle type, generalizing the 3-strand braid group. We show that, for linear Garside groups of spindle type, a normal form and a solution to the conjugacy problem are logspace computable. For linear Garside groups of spindle type with homogenous presentation we compute a geodesic normal form in logspace.
We study Artin-Tits braid groups $\mathbb{B}_W$ of type ADE via the action of $\mathbb{B}_W$ on the homotopy category $\mathcal{K}$ of graded projective zigzag modules (which categorifies the action of the Weyl group $W$ on the root lattice). Following Brav-Thomas, we define a metric on $\mathbb{B}_W$ induced by the canonical $t$-structure on $\mathcal{K}$, and prove that this metric on $\mathbb{B}_W$ agrees with the word-length metric in the canonical generators of the standard positive monoid $\mathbb{B}_W^+$ of the braid group. We also define, for each choice of a Coxeter element $c$ in $W$…
