Burau representation of $B_4$ and quantization of the rational projective plane

Abstract

The braid group $B_4$ naturally acts on the rational projective plane ${\mathbb{P}}^2(\mathbb{Q})$, this action corresponds to the classical integral reduced Burau representation of $B_4$. The first result of this paper is a classification of the orbits of this action. The Burau representation then defines an action of $B_4$ on ${\mathbb{P}}^2(\mathbb{Z}(q))$, where $q$ is a formal parameter and $\mathbb{Z}(q)$ is the field of rational functions in $q$ with integer coefficients. We study orbits of the $B_4$-action on ${\mathbb{P}}^2(\mathbb{Z}(q))$, and show existence of embeddings of the $q$-deformed projective line ${\mathbb{P}}^1(\mathbb{Z}(q))$ that precisely correspond to the notion of $q$-rationals due to Morier-Genoud and Ovsienko.

Accepted in Comptes Rendus Mathématiques, https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/mathematique