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On the braid index of highly twisted braid closures
Geometry/Topology| Speaker: | Diana Hubbard, University of Michigan |
| Related Webpage: | https://sites.google.com/site/dianadhubbard/ |
| Location: | 2112 MSB |
| Start time: | Tue, Oct 17 2017, 1:10PM |
The braid index of a knot is the least number of strands necessary to represent it as the closure of a braid. If we view a braid as an element of the mapping class group of the punctured disk, its fractional Dehn twist coefficient (FDTC) measures the amount of twisting it exerts about the boundary. In this talk I will discuss joint work with Peter Feller showing that if a braid has FDTC greater than n-1, then its closure is of minimal braid index, which draws a connection between braids as topological and geometric objects.