Braid groups of imprimitive complex reflection groups. (Q2259165)

The complex reflection groups have been classified and they are divided into two main classes: primitive and imprimitive. The braid group of a complex reflection group is defined as the fundamental group of the regular orbits. The purpose of the paper under review is to provide new presentations and diagrams for the imprimitive reflection groups, \(G(de,e,r)\) and their braid groups \(B(de,e,r)\) for \(d,r\geq 2\) and \(e\geq 1\). The new presentations are given as Theorems 3.1 and 3.2. Instead of writing those theorems here we write part of corollaries of the two theorems. Namely: Corollary 3.3: The homomorphism \(\varphi\colon B(de,e,r)\to C^e_\infty\ltimes B(\infty,\infty,r)\) given by \(\varphi(z)=z\), \(\varphi(t_i)=t_i\) and \(\varphi(s_j)=s_j\) for \(i\in\mathbb Z\) and \(3\leq j\leq r\) is an isomorphism. Corollary 3.4: The reflection group \(G(de,e,r)\) for \(d,r\geq 2\) and \(e\geq 1\) is isomorphic to the semidirect product \(C^e_d\ltimes G(de,de,r)\), where \(C^e_d=\langle z\rangle\) is a cyclic group of order \(d\). Hence \(G(de,e,r)\) has the following presentation: -- Generators: \(\{z\}\cup T_{de}\cup S\) where \(T_{de}=\{t_i\mid i\in\mathbb Z/de\}\) and \(S=\{s_j\mid 3\leq j\leq r\}\); -- Relations: all the relations of \(G(de,de,r)\) in Theorem 2.1, along with (i) the relations \(zt_i=t_{i-e}z\) and \(zs_j=s_jz\) for \(i\in\mathbb Z/de\) and \(3\leq j\leq r\) describing the semidirect product action, (ii) the relations \(z^d=1\), \(t_i^2=1\) and \(s_j^2=1\) for \(i\in\mathbb Z/de\) and \(3\leq j\leq r\) describing the order of the generating reflections. Then the relation of these groups with the braid groups is studied, and several results about periodic elements are obtained, notoriously: Theorem 4.14: In \(B(de,e,r)\), an element \(g\) is periodic if and only if \(g\) is conjugate to a power of \(\lambda\). -- Here \(\lambda\) is a certain element of the group explicitly given there. In the last section the presentation of \(B(de,e,r)\) given by Theorem 3.2 is explicitly computed.