Braid Group Representations of Low Degree
Edward Formanek · Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society · 1996
The irreducible complex representations of degree at most n − 1 of the braid group Bn on n strings are classified. For n ≠ 4, 5, 6, they are either one-dimensional, or the tensor product of a one-dimensional representation with a composition factor of a specialization of the Burau representation. The variety of degree-three semisimple representations of B4 is described.