THE BRAID GROUP OF A NECKLACE

Abstract. We show several geometric and algebraic aspects of a neck-lace: a link composed with a core circle and a series of circles linked to this core. We first prove that the fundamental group of the configura-tion space of necklaces (that we will call braid group of a necklace) is isomorphic to the braid group over an annulus quotiented by the square of the center. We then define braid groups of necklaces and affine braid groups of type A in terms of automorphisms of free groups and charac-terize these automorphisms among all automorphisms of free groups. In the case of affine braid groups of type A such representation is faithful. 1