Braids and braid groups, the focus of this text, have been at the heart of important mathematical developments over the last two decades. Their association with permutations has led to their presence in a number of mathematical fields and physics. As central objects in knot theory and 3-dimensional topology, braid groups has led to the creation of a new field called quantum topology.

In this well-written presentation, motivated by numerous examples and problems, the authors introduce the basic theory of braid groups, highlighting several definitions that show their equivalence; this is followed by a treatment of the relationship between braids, knots and links. Important results then treat the linearity and orderability of the subject. Relevant additional material is included in five large appendices.

Braid Groups will serve graduate students and a number of mathematicians coming from diverse disciplines.

Autorentext

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.

Zusammenfassung
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.

Inhalt

Braids and Braid Groups.- Braids, Knots, and Links.- Homological Representations of the Braid Groups.- Symmetric Groups and Iwahori#x2013;Hecke Algebras.- Representations of the Iwahori#x2013;Hecke Algebras.- Garside Monoids and Braid Monoids.- An Order on the Braid Groups.- Presentations of SL(Z) and PSL(Z).- Fibrations and Homotopy Sequences.- The Birman#x2013;Murakami#x2013;Wenzl Algebras.- Left Self-Distributive Sets.