Examples of large centralizers in the Artin braid groups. (Q1827426)

N. Franco and J. González-Meneses made the following conjecture: The normalizer of an element of the Artin braid group \(B_n\) on \(n\) strings is generated by no more than \(n-1\) elements. The `normalizer' of an element of a group is defined as the subgroup of all elements commuting with it; this subgroup is often also called the `centralizer' of the given element. The conjecture was supported by a new algorithm for finding generators of a centralizer, suggested by Franco and González-Meneses, and by extensive computations based on this algorithm. The goal of this paper is to present simple examples of elements of \(B_n\) for which the centralizer requires a number of generators which is quadratic in \(n\). In particular, the conjecture is disproved. The key insight is that the centralizer may be closer to a pure braid group than to a braid group (as one may think initially), and that a pure braid group requires the number of generators quadratic in the number of strings.