Presentations of Schur covers of braid groups (Q6122745)

Let \(G\) be a group and \(0\rightarrow H_{2}(G) \xrightarrow{\varpi} E \rightarrow G \rightarrow 1\) a central group extension of \(G\) by the integral second homology \(H_{2}(G)\) of \(G\). If the cohomology class \(u \in H^{2}(G,H_{2}(G))\) corresponding to this central extension is mapped to \(\mathrm{id}_{H_{2}}(G)\) by the homomorphism \(\kappa : H^{2}(G, H_{2}(G)) \rightarrow \mathrm{Hom}_{\mathbb{Z}}(H_{2}(G), H_{2}(G))\) coming from the universal coefficient theorem, the group \(E\) is called a Schur cover of \(G\). For \(n \geq 1\), let \(B_{n}\) be the braid group of \(n\)-strands and \(\mathfrak{S}_{n}\) be the symmetric group of degree \(n\). There is a natural surjective homomorphism from \(B_{n}\) to \(\mathfrak{S}_{n}\), from the viewpoint of Artin groups, \(\mathfrak{S}_{n}\) is the Coxeter group of \(B_{n}\). In the paper under review, the authors consider several basic facts of Schur covers of the symmetric groups and braid groups. In particular, they give explicit presentations of Schur covers of braid groups. The main theorem of this paper is (Theorem 1): For any \(n \geq 4\), a presentation for the Schur cover \(C_{n}\) of the braid group \(B_{n}\) is given by generators \(\sigma_{1}^{\ast}, \ldots, \sigma_{n-1}^{\ast}, z^{\ast}\) subject to relations \((z^{\ast})^{2}=1\), \(\sigma_{i}^{\ast}\sigma_{i+1}^{\ast}\sigma_{i}^{\ast}=\sigma_{i+1}^{\ast}\sigma_{i}^{\ast} \sigma_{j}^{\ast}\) (\(1 \leq i \leq n-2\)), \(\sigma_{i}^{\ast}\sigma_{j}^{\ast}=z^{\ast}\sigma_{j}^{\ast}\sigma_{i}^{\ast}\) (\(i<j-1\)) and \( \sigma_{i}^{\ast}z^{\ast} =z^{\ast}\sigma_{i}^{\ast}\) (\(1\leq i \leq n-1\)). Here \(\varpi: C_{n} \rightarrow B_{n}\) satisfies \(\varpi(\sigma_{i}^{\ast})=\sigma_{i}\) (\(1 \leq i \leq n-1\)) and \(\varpi(z^{\ast})=1\).