ACTIONS OF THE N-STRAND BRAID GROUPS ON THE FREE GROUP OF RANK N WHICH ARE SIMILAR TO THE ARTIN REPRESENTATION

Abstract

We classify an action of the $n$-strand braid group on the free group of rank $n$ which is similar to the Artin representation in the sense that the $i$-th generator $\sigma_{i}$ of $B_{n}$ acts so that it fixes all free generators $x_{j}$ except $j = i,i+1$. We determine all such representations and discuss knot invariants coming from such representations.