A family of representations of braid groups on surfaces. (Q600636)

The main purpose of the present work is to provide a set of new representations of the braid groups of the compact surfaces with boundary. Because the classical braid group \(B_n(D)\) is embedded in the braid group of a compact surface \(\Sigma\) with nonempty boundary, the authors are mainly concerned with representations which are, as defined in the work, extensions of the Burau representations and the Lawrence-Krammer-Bigelow representations, [see \textit{D. Krammer}, Invent. Math. 142, No. 3, 451-486 (2000; Zbl 0988.20023)], also called homology linear representations. The latter ones show that the Artin braid groups are linear. They mimic the procedure used to construct the Lawrence-Krammer-Bigelow representations using covering space of the configuration space \(B_{n,k}(\Sigma)\), where \(B_{n,k}(\Sigma)\) is the usual unordered configuration space of \(\Sigma-\{z_1^0,\dots,z_n^0\}\). Let \(\mathbb B_{n;k}(\Sigma)\) be the intertwining \((n,k)\)-braid group on \(\Sigma\), \(H_\Sigma\) the abstract group depending only on \(k\) that admits for \(k\geq 2\) the presentation in which 1. the generators are \(q,t,\overline m_1,\dots,\overline m_g,\overline\ell_1,\dots,\overline\ell_g,m_1,\dots,m_g,\ell_1,\dots,\ell_g\); 2. the relations are such that all generators commute except that \([m_r,\ell_r]=t^2\) and \([\overline m_r,\ell_r]=[m_r,\overline\ell_r]=q\), and \(\varphi_\Sigma\colon\mathbb B_{n;k}(\Sigma)\to H_\Sigma\) a certain epimorphism. The main result is Theorem 3.2 where they show: Theorem 3.2. Let \(\Sigma\) be a compact, connected oriented 2-dimensional manifold with nonempty boundary. Define the group \(H_\Sigma\) (depending on \(k\)) and the epimorphism \(\psi_\Sigma\colon\mathbb B_{n;k}(\Sigma)\to H_\Sigma\) as above. Let \(\varphi_\Sigma\) be the restriction of \(\psi_\Sigma\) to \(\mathbb B_{n,k}(\Sigma)\). Set \(G_\Sigma=\varphi_\Sigma(\mathbb B_{n,k}(\Sigma))\). Then there is a homomorphism \(\Phi_\Sigma\colon\mathbb B_{0,n}(\Sigma)\to\Aut_{Z[H_\Sigma]}(Z[H_{\Sigma_H}]\otimes_{Z[G_\Sigma]}H_k^{BM}(\widetilde B_{n,k}(\Sigma)))\), \(\beta\to\beta\otimes\widetilde\beta_*\), where the action of \(\beta\) on \(H_\Sigma\) is given by \(\beta.h=h\psi(\beta)\) for \(h\in H_{\Sigma}\). This family \(\Phi_\Sigma\) of representations is an extension of a homology linear representation of the classical braid group \(\mathbb B_{0,n}(D)\) in the sense of Definition 2.2. The authors anticipate a very natural question by saying ``the faithfulness and irreducibility of our representations are beyond the scope of this article.'' The article contains a good description of the known representations and treats the new case, which are linear representations extending certain known linear representations, with a fair amount of details, which are not so simple.