A Garside-theoretic analysis of the Burau representations

Abstract

We establish relations between both the classical and the dual Garside structures of the braid group and the Burau representation. Using the classical structure, we formulate a non-vanishing criterion for the Burau representation of the 4-strand braid group. In the dual context, it is shown that the Burau representation for arbitrary braid index is injective when restricted to the set of simply-nested braids.