Lower central and derived series of semi-direct products, and applications to surface braid groups (Q2301472)

In the first part of the present paper, the authors give a general description of lower central series and derived series an arbitrary semi-direct product. In the second part of the paper, they study these series for the full braid group \(B_n(M)\) and pure braid group \(P_n(M)\) of a compact surface \(M\), orientable or non-orientable, the aim being to determine the values of \(n\) for which \(B_n(M)\) and \(P_n(M)\) are residually nilpotent or residually soluble. They first solve this problem in the case where \(M\) is the 2-torus \(\mathbb{T}\). The authors prove (Theorem 1.2) that the braid group \(B_n(\mathbb{T})\) is residually soluble if and only if \(n \leq 4\). For the braid group of the Klein bottle is proved that \(P_n(\mathbb{K})\) is residually nilpotent for all \(n \geq 1\) (see Theorem 1.3). In Theorem 1.4 is proved that if \(M\) is a compact non-orientable surface of genus \(g \geq 1\) without boundary, then \(B_n(M)\) is residually nilpotent if and only if \(n \leq 2\), and is residually soluble if and only if \(n \leq 4\).