Seminar of Algebra

A braid can be seen as an equivalence class of words, and choosing a unique word representing each braid helps computation on braids, motivating the study of multiple normal forms. In the standard braid monoid, two such normal forms are the Garside normal form, which cuts a braid into a sequence of small simple braids, and the alternating normal form, which consists of recursively splitting a braid into a sequence of braids using less strands. The Garside normal form has been found to have many useful properties, in particular forming a regular and automatic language, as well as having a simple local characterization. On the other hand, only the regularity of the alternating normal was known. I will describe a new local characterization of the alternating normal form, explicitly construct its minimal automaton, and give some intuition regarding its automaticity.