Lectures on topology of words (Q1000324)

Gauss words are words where every letter appears twice. Those words arise from closed plane curves with only double crossings. Words on an arbitrary alphabet are approximated by Gauss words and then studied up to natural modifications inspired by the Reidemeister moves of knot diagrams. The moves lead to a notion of homotopy of words. Several homotopy invariants of words are introduced and a homotopy classification of words of length five is given. The article follows lectures given at Kyoto University in 2006 and is based on four different papers of the author.