Knot at Lunch, July 5, 2007

From Drorbn
Jump to navigationJump to search

Invitation

Dear Knot at Lunch People,

We will have our next summer lunch on Thursday July 5, 2007, at the usual place, Bahen 6180, at 12 noon.

As always, please bring brown-bag lunch and fresh ideas. I'm not sure what we will be talking about; perhaps just continue with last week's topics.

As always, if you know anyone I should add to this mailing list or if you wish to be removed from this mailing list please let me know. To prevent junk accumulation in mailboxes, I will actively remove inactive people unless they request otherwise.

Best,

Dror.

Some Content

Definition. Let be a group homomorphism; denote its action by ; i.e., let for every . Let "the virtualization of ", or more precisely, "the virtualization of with respect to ", be the following quotient of the free product of and :

whenever , and in .

Though note that we do not mod out by when , and .

It is clear that extends to a homomorphism . Let "the pure virtualization of " be the kernel of that homomorphism:

.

Question. Is this definition at all interesting? More precisely:

  • If is a braid group and is the corresponding symmetric group, can be reasonably identified with "virtual braids"?
  • Does the that we get here agree with of last time?
  • Is this definition encountered anywhere else in mathematics?
  • Are there other examples in which this definition is interesting?
  • Do we gain any new insight by using this definition?