A Laundry Surface for Braids
Victor A. Nicholson · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2006
Laundry surfaces for closed braid diagrams are presented. It is shown that braid diagrams are characterized by linking matrices obtained by lifting cycles from these surfaces. Oriented link types are then characterized by equivalence classes of linking matrices. Similar equivalence classes can be composed of Gordon and Litherland forms or Seifert matrices.