Journal of the London Mathematical Society Advance Access originally published online on September 28, 2007
Journal of the London Mathematical Society 2007 76(2):293-312; doi:10.1112/jlms/jdm049
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© 2007 London Mathematical Society
The braid group of
n
Department of Mathematics
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
We define pseudo-Garside groups and prove a theorem parallel to Garside's result on the word problem for the usual braid groups. The main novelty is that the set of simple elements can be infinite. A group B = B(
n) called the braid group of
n and which resembles mapping class groups is introduced. It is to GL(n,
) what the braid group is to the symmetric group Sn. We prove that B is a pseudo-Garside group. We give a small presentation for B(
n) assuming one for B(
3) is given.
2000 Mathematics Subject Classification 20F60 (primary), 06F15, 20F05, 20F36, 20H05 (secondary).
Received March 2, 2006; revised February 16, 2007; published online September 28, 2007.