Reducible braids and Garside theory

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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: González-Meneses López, Juan, Wiest, Bert
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2011
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/42251
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/11441/42251
https://doi.org/10.2140/agt.2011.11.2971
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:braid group
Garside group
Nielsen–Thurston classification
algorithm
Descripción
Sumario: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 time algorithm for deciding the NielsenThurston type of any braid, modulo one well-known conjecture on the speed of convergence of the cyclic sliding operation.