The Infimum, Supremum, and Geodesic Length of a Braid Conjugacy Class

Algorithmic solutions to the conjugacy problem in the braid groups Bn,n =2, 3, 4, … were given in earlier work. This note concerns the computation of two integer class invariants, known as “inf” and “sup.” A key issue in both algorithms is the number m of times one must “cycle” (resp. “decycle”) in order to either increase inf (resp. decr...更多