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A foliated disk whose boundary is Morton's irreducible 4-braid
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2000
Abstract
From the viewpoint of Birman and Menasco, a particular type of singular foliation on a surface with boundary induces an embedding of the surface in 3-space, such that the boundary of the surface is braided relative to the z-axis; hence the foliation determines a conjugacy class in the braid group. Birman and Hirsch describe an explicit algorithm to find a braid word representing this conjugacy class, given the foliation. A braid word β ∈ Bn is said to be irreducible if it is not conjugate to a braid of the form bσ±1n−1, with b ∈ Bn−1. We exhibit a foliation of a disk and show that the corresponding braid word is an irreducible element of B4. We give an explicit geometric description of the embedding induced by the foliation and describe a particularly nice form of symmetry possessed by this example.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society , Volume 128 , Issue 1 , January 2000 , pp. 95 - 101
- Copyright
- The Cambridge Philosophical Society 2000