The theory of vines (Q4338220)

A string or an arc is a pieceweise-linear embedding of the unit interval \(I=[0,1]\) into \(\mathbb{R}\times I\). Let \((1,0,1),\dots,(n,0,1)\) be the initial nodes and \((1,0,0),\dots,(n,0,0)\) the terminal ones. An \(n\)-vine is a set \(\{v_1,\dots,v_n\}\) of strings such that for all \(i,j=1,\dots,n\): (i) \(v_i(0)=(i,0,1)\), (ii) \(v_i(1)\) is a terminal node, (iii) \(\forall h\in I\) the third coordinate of \(v_i(h)\) is \(1-h\), (iv) if \(v_i(t)=v_j(t)\), then \(v_i(s)=v_j(s)\) for all \(s\geq t\). An equivalence of two \(n\)-vines is defined as a composition of equivalence classes of \(n\)-vines, that leads to the vine monoid \(\mathcal V_n\). Every \(n\)-vine \(v\) defines a transformation \(v\eta\) of \(\{1,\dots,n\}\), and this correspondence leads to the homomorphism \(\eta\colon\mathcal V_n\to\mathcal T_n\) of monoids. The so called simple \(n\)-vines (those ones whose strings do not cross) form a submonoid isomorphic to the monoid of order preserving transformations of \(\{1,\dots,n\}\). The monoid \(\mathcal V_n\) is a quotient of a general product of the group of \(n\)-string braids and the monoid of order preserving transformations of \(\{1,\dots,n\}\). A presentation of the vine monoids is found. Artin's theorem for braids is extended to give a faithful representation of the monoid \(\mathcal V_n\) in the monoid of left endomorphisms of the free group of rank \(n\). This gives an effective solution to the word problem for vines. Some known results about \(\mathcal T_n\) are deduced. The author motivates the introduction of vines and notes that the development of them in the paper is adopted from the treatment of braids given by \textit{G. Burde} and \textit{H. Zieschang} [``Knots'' (de Gruyter Stud. Math. 5, 1985; Zbl 0568.57001)].