Braids and Coverings

Selected Topics

af Vagn Lundsgaard (Technical University of Denmark Hansen

This book is based on a graduate course taught by the author at the University of Maryland. The work falls into two strands: first the elementary theory of Artin Braid groups is developed and the link between knot theory and the combinatorics of braid groups is discussed through Markov's theorem; this is followed by an investigation of polynomial maps.