Burau Representation of Braid Groups and q-Rationals

Abstract

Abstract We establish a link between the new theory of $q$-deformed rational numbers and the classical Burau representation of the braid group ${\mathcal {B}}_{3}$. We apply this link to the open problem of classification of faithful complex specializations of this representation. As a result we provide an answer to this problem in terms of the singular set of the $q$-rationals and prove the faithfulness of the Burau representation specialized at complex $t\in {\mathbb {C}}^{*}$ outside the annulus $3-2\sqrt 2 \leq |t| \leq 3+2\sqrt 2.$