REPRESENTATIVE BRAIDS FOR LINKS ASSOCIATED TO PLANE IMMERSED CURVES

Abstract

In [ AC 2], A'Campo associates a link in S3 to any proper generic immersion of a disjoint union of arcs into a 2-disc. We give a sample algorithmic way to produce, from the immersion, a representative braid for such links. As a by-product we get a minimal representative braid for any algebraic link, from a divide associated to a real deformation of the polynomial defining the link.