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Representations of braid groups
Geometry/Topology| Speaker: | Stephen Bigelow, University of California, Berkeley |
| Location: | 693 Kerr |
| Start time: | Mon, Feb 28 2000, 4:10PM |
Braid groups were originally defined by Artin as a tool for studying knots. A braid is a certain kind of arrangement of pieces of string in space. Two braids with the same number of strands can be multiplied by sticking their ends together. I will describe some homomorphisms from groups of braids to groups of matrices, and outline my proof that one such homomorphism is one-to-one.