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 $B$.
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].
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 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.
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 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.
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…
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 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…
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…
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 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.
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.
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…
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).
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.
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.
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 …
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.
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…
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.
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 Arti…
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…
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…
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…
We introduce a condition on Garside groups that we call Dehornoy structure. An iteration of such a structure leads to a left order on the group. We show conditions for a Garside group to admit a Dehornoy structure, and we apply these criteria to prove that the Artin groups of type A and I 2 (m), m $\ge$ 4, have Dehornoy structures. We show that the left orders on the Artin groups of type A obtained from their Dehornoy structures are the Dehornoy orders. In the case of the Artin groups of type I 2 (m), m $\ge$ 4, we show that the left orders derived from their Dehornoy structures coincide with …
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…
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.
A Garside monoid is a cancellative monoid with a finite lattice generating set; a Garside group is the group of fractions of a Garside monoid. The family of Garside groups contains the Artin-Tits groups of spherical type. We generalise the well-known notion of a parabolic subgroup of an Artin-Tits group into that of a parabolic subgroup of a Garside group. We also define the more general notion of a Garside subgroup of a Garside group, which is related to the notion of LCM-homomorphisms between Artin-Tits groups. We prove that most of the properties of parabolic subgroups extend to this subgro…
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 introduce and investigate the ribbon groupoid associated with a Garside group. Under a technical hypothesis, we prove that this category is a Garside groupoid. We decompose this groupoid into a semi-direct product of two of its parabolic subgroupoids and provide a groupoid presentation. In order to established the latter result, we describe quasi-centralizers in Garside groups. All results hold in the particular case of Artin-Tits groups of spherical type.
We give an algorithm which decides the Nielsen-Thurston type of a given four-strand braid. The complexity of our algorithm is quadratic with respect to word length. The proof of its validity is based on a result which states that for a reducible 4-braid which is as short as possible within its conjugacy class (short in the sense of Garside), reducing curves surrounding three punctures must be round or almost round.
Garside theory emerged from the study of Artin groups and their generalizations. Finite-type Artin groups admit two types of interval Garside structures corresponding to their standard and dual presentations. Concerning affine Artin groups, Digne established interval Garside structures for two families of these groups by using their dual presentations. Recently, McCammond established that none of the remaining dual presentations (except for one additional case) correspond to interval Garside structures. In this paper, shifting attention from dual presentations to other nice presentations for t…
Birman, Ko and Lee have introduced a new monoid ${\cal B}^{*}_{n}$--with an explicit presentation--whose group of fractions is the $n$-strand braid group ${\cal B}_{n}$. Building on a new approach by Digne, Michel and himself, Bessis has defined a {\it dual} braid monoid for every finite Coxeter type Artin-Tits group extending the type A case. Here, we give an explicit presentation for this dual braid monoid in the case of types B and D, and we study the combinatorics of the underlying Garside structures.
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-Lee
For every finite Coxeter group $Γ$, each positive braids in the corresponding braid group admits a unique decomposition as a finite sequence of elements of $Γ$, the so-called Garside-normal form.The study of the associated adjacency matrix $Adj(Γ)$ allows to count the number of Garside-normal form of a given length.In this paper we prove that the characteristic polynomial of $Adj(B_n)$ divides the one of $Adj(B_{n+1})$. The key point is the use of a Hopf algebra based on signed permutations. A similar result was already known for the type $A$. We observe that this does not hold for type $D$. T…
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 $W$…
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 show that every finitely generated Artin-Tits group admits a finite Garside family, by introducing the notion of a low element in a Coxeter group and proving that the family of all low elements in a Coxeter system (W, S) with S finite includes S and is finite and closed under suffix and join with respect to the right weak order.
It has been conjectured that in a braid group, or more generally in a Garside group, applying any sequence of monotone equivalences and word reversings can increase the length of a word by at most a linear factor depending on the group presentation only. We give a counter-example to this conjecture, but, on the other hand, we establish length upper bounds for the case when only right reversing is involved. We also state a new conjecture which would, like the above one, imply that the space complexity of the handle reduction algorithm is linear.
