The Lawrence representation $L_{n,m}$ is a family of homological representation of the braid group $B_n$, which specializes to the reduced Burau and the Lawrence-Krammer representation when $m$ is 1 and 2. In this article we show that the Lawrence representation is faithful for $m \geq 2$.
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.
We use some Lie group theory and Budney's unitarization of the Lawrence-Krammer representation, to prove that for generic parameters of definite form the image of the representation (also on certain types of subgroups) is dense in the unitary group. This implies that, except possibly for closures of full-twist braids, all links have infinitely many conjugacy classes of braid representations on any non-minimal number of (and at least 4) strands.
The Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid groups recently came to prominence when it was shown to be faithful by myself and Krammer. It is an action of the braid group on a certain homology module $H_2(\tilde{C})$ over the ring of Laurent polynomials in $q$ and $t$. In this paper we describe some surfaces in $\tilde{C}$ representing elements of homology. We use these to give a new proof that $H_2(\tilde{C})$ is a free module. We also show that the $(n-2,2)$ representation of the Temperley-Lieb algebra is the image of a map to relative homology at $t=-q^{-1}$, clarifying work of Lawrence…
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 over the fractional field Q (q,s).
We show that the Lawrence--Krammer representation is unitary. We explicitly present the non-singular matrix representing the sesquilinear pairing invariant under the action. We show that reversing the orientation of a braid is equivalent to the transposition of its Lawrence--Krammer matrix followed by a certain conjugation. As corollaries it is shown that the characteristic polynomial of the Lawrence--Krammer matrix is invariant under substitution of its variables with their inverses up to multiplication by units, and is not a complete conjugacy invariant for braids.
We study homological representations of mapping class groups, including the braid groups. These arise from the twisted homology of certain configuration spaces, and come in many different flavours. Our goal is to give a unified general account of the fundamental relationships (non-degenerate pairings, embeddings, isomorphisms) between the many different flavours of homological representations. Our motivating examples are the Lawrence-Bigelow representations of the braid groups, which are of central importance in the study of the braid groups themselves, as well as their connections with quantu…
A non-singular sesquilinear form is constructed that is preserved by the Lawrence-Krammer representation. It is shown that if the polynomial variables q and t of the Lawrence-Krammer representation are chosen to be appropriate algebraically independant unit complex numbers, then the form is negative-definite Hermitian. Since unitary matrices diagonalize, the conjugacy class of a matrix in the unitary group is determined by its eigenvalues. It is shown that the eigenvalues of a Lawrence-Krammer matrix satisfy some symmetry relations. Using the fact that non-invertible knots exist, the symmetry …
We study the kernel of the evaluated Burau representation through the braid element $σ_i σ_{i+1} σ_i$. The element is significant as a part of the standard braid relation. We establish the form of this element's image raised to the $n^{th}$ power. Interestingly, the cyclotomic polynomials arise and can be used to define the expression. The main result of this paper is that the Burau representation of the braid group of $n$ strands for $n \geq 3$ is unfaithful at any primitive root of unity, excepting the first three.
A very popular problem on braid groups has recently been solved by Bigelow and Krammer, namely, they have found a faithful linear representation for the braid group B_n. In their papers, Bigelow and Krammer suggested that their representation is the monodromy representation of a certain fibration. Our goal in this paper is to understand this monodromy representation using standard tools from the theory of hyperplane arrangements. In particular, we prove that the representation of Bigelow and Krammer is a sub-representation of the monodromy representation which we consider, but that it cannot b…
We propose a family of new representations of the braid groups on surfaces that extend linear representations of the braid groups on a disc such as the Burau representation and the Lawrence-Krammer-Bigelow representation.
We show that a non-trivial, non-central normal subgroup of the braid groups contains a braid whose closure is a hyperbolic knot with arbitrary large genus. This shows that non-faithfulness of a quantum representation implies that the corresponding quantum invariant fails to detect the unknot. The proof utilizes the Dehornoy ordering of the braid groups.
We consider the linear representations of the mapping class group of an n-punctured 2-sphere constructed by V. F. R. Jones using Iwahori-Hecke algebras of type A. We show that their faithfulness is equivalent to that of certain related Iwahori-Hecke algebra representation of Artin's braid group of n-1 strands. In the case of n=6, we provide a further restriction for the kernel using our previous result, as well as a certain relation to the Burau representation of degree 4.
We extend Lawrence's representations of the braid groups to relative homology modules, and we show that they are free modules over a Laurent polynomials ring. We define homological operators and we show that they actually provide a representation for an integral version for $U_q \mathfrak{sl}(2)$. We suggest an isomorphism between a given basis of homological modules and the standard basis of tensor products of Verma modules, and we show it to preserve the integral ring of coefficients, the action of $U_q \mathfrak{sl}(2)$, the braid group representations and their grading. This recovers an in…
The braid groups B_n can be defined as the mapping class group of the n-punctured disc. The Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid group B_n is the induced action on a certain twisted second homology of the space of unordered pairs of points in the n-punctured disc. Recently, Daan Krammer showed that this is a faithful representation in the case n=4. In this paper, we show that it is faithful for all n.
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.
We define a family of the braid group representations via the action of the $R$-matrix (of the quasitriangular extension) of the restricted quantum $\mathfrak{sl}(2)$ on a tensor power of a simple projective module. This family is an extension of the Lawrence representation specialized at roots of unity. Although the center of the braid group has finite order on the specialized Laurence representations, this action is faithful for our extension.
In this paper we survey some work on representations of $B_n$ given by the induced action on a homology module of some space. One of these, called the Lawrence-Krammer representation, recently came to prominence when it was shown to be faithful for all $n$. We will outline the methods used, applying them to a closely related representation for which the proof is slightly easier. The main tool is the Blanchfield pairing, a sesquilinear pairing between elements of relative homology. We discuss two other applications of the Blanchfield pairing, namely a proof that the Burau representation is not …
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…
The ADO invariants are a sequence of non-semisimple quantum invariants coming from the representation theory of the quantum group $U_q(sl(2))$ at roots of unity. Ito showed that these invariants are sums of traces of quotients of homological representations of braid groups (truncated Lawrence representations). In this paper we show a direct homological formula for the ADO invariants, as sums of partial traces of Lawrence type representations, without further truncations.
We categorify the coefficients of the Burau representation matrix using elementary geometrical methods. We show the faithfulness of this categorification in the sense that it detects the trivial braid.
In a previous work [11], the author considered a representation of the braid group ρ: B_n\to GL_m(\Bbb Z[q^{\pm 1},t^{\pm 1}]) (m=n(n-1)/2), and proved it to be faithful for n=4. Bigelow [3] then proved the same representation to be faithful for all n by a beautiful topological argument. The present paper gives a different proof of the faithfulness for all n. We establish a relation between the Charney length in the braid group and exponents of t. A certain B_n-invariant subset of the module is constructed whose properties resemble those of convex cones. We relate line segments in this set wit…
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.
In this paper we will present a homological model for Coloured Jones Polynomials. For each colour $N \in \mathbb {N}$, we will describe the invariant $J_N(L,q)$ as a graded intersection pairing of certain homology classes in a covering of the configuration space on the punctured disk. This construction is based on the Lawrence representation and a result due to Kohno that relates quantum representations and homological representations of the braid groups.
We construct a finite dimensional quiver algebra from the non-simply laced type $B$ Dynkin diagram, which we call the type $B$ zigzag algebra. This leads to a faithful categorical action of the type $B$ braid group $\mathcal{A}(B)$, acting on the homotopy category of its projective modules. This categorical action is also closely related to the topological action of $\mathcal{A}(B)$, viewed as mapping class group of the punctured disc -- hence our exposition can be seen as a type $B$ analogue of Khovanov-Seidel's work in arXiv:math/0006056v2. Moreover, we show that certain category of bimodule…
\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 a Conjecture implying faithfulness and a Lemma explaining the implication. We give some arguments suggesting why we exp…
For a 3-manifold M, McMullen derived from the Alexander polynomial of M a norm on H^1(M, R) called the Alexander norm. He showed that the Thurston norm on H^1(M, R), which measures the complexity of a dual surface, is an upper bound for the Alexander norm. He asked if these two norms were equal on all of H^1(M,R) when M fibers over the circle. Here, I give examples which show that the answer to this question is emphatically no. This question is related to the faithfulness of the Gassner representations of the braid groups. The key tool used to understand this question is the Bieri-Neumann-Stre…
We construct a faithful categorical action of the type $B$ braid group on the bounded homotopy category of finitely generated projective modules over a finite dimensional algebra which we call the type $B$ zigzag algebra. This categorical action is closely related to the action of the type $B$ braid group on curves on the disc. Thus, our exposition can be seen as a type $B$ analogue of the work of Khovanov-Seidel in arXiv:math/0006056. Moreover, we relate our topological (respectively categorical) action of the type $B$ Artin braid group to their topological (respectively categorical) action o…
In this paper we construct a faithful representation of the mapping class group of the genus two surface into a group of matrices over the complex numbers. Our starting point is the Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid group B_n, which was shown to be faithful by Bigelow and Krammer. We obtain a faithful representation of the mapping class group of the n-punctured sphere by using the close relationship between this group and B_{n-1}. We then extend this to a faithful representation of the mapping class group of the genus two surface, using Birman and Hilden's result that this group is …