1998/04/06 by Joan S. Birman, Rolland Trapp
Mathematics · #math.GT
published as Jnl Knot Th. 7 (1998),1-22 · 22 pages,corrected typos so that figures are inserted into text
arxiv created 1998/04/06 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
The notion of a braided chord diagram is introduced and studied. An equivalence relation is given which identifies all braidings of a fixed chord diagram. It is shown that finite-type invariants are stratified by braid index for knots which can be represented as closed 3-braids. Partial results are obtained about spanning sets for the algebra of chord diagrams of braid index 3.