Braid Groups - Paperback

by Christian Kassel (Author), O. Dodane (Designed by), Vladimir Turaev (Author)

Braids and braid groups form central objects in knot theory and three-dimensional topology. They have also been at the heart of important mathematical developments over the last two decades. This introductory text presents the theory of braids and braid groups to the reader along with the recent developments in this field. Developments related to the linearity and orderability of braid groups are carefully presented. This well-written text is ideal for graduate students and all mathematicians with an interest in braids and braid groups.

Back Jacket

Braids and braid groups have been at the heart of mathematical development over the last two decades. Braids play an important role in diverse areas of mathematics and theoretical physics. The special beauty of the theory of braids stems from their attractive geometric nature and their close relations to other fundamental geometric objects, such as knots, links, mapping class groups of surfaces, and configuration spaces.

In this presentation the authors thoroughly examine various aspects of the theory of braids, starting from basic definitions and then moving to more recent results. The advanced topics cover the Burau and the Lawrence--Krammer--Bigelow representations of the braid groups, the Alexander--Conway and Jones link polynomials, connections with the representation theory of the Iwahori--Hecke algebras, and the Garside structure and orderability of the braid groups.

This book will serve graduate students, mathematicians, and theoretical physicists interested in low-dimensional topology and its connections with representation theory.

Author Biography

Dr. Christian Kassel is the director of CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France), was the director of l'Institut de Recherche Mathematique Avancee from 2000 to 2004, and is an editor for the Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra. Kassel has numerous publications, including the book Quantum Groups in the Springer Gradate Texts in Mathematics series.

Dr. Vladimir Turaev was also a professor at the CNRS and is currently at Indiana University in the Department of Mathematics.