It used to be you had to talk about “the field with one element” very quietly, and only among people whose opinion of you was secure. The reason, of course, is that there is no field with one element. Which doesn’t stop people from saying “But if there _were_ a field with one element, what would it be like?”
Nowadays all kinds of people are musing about this odd question in the bright light of day, and no one finds it kooky. John Baez covered the basics in a 2007 issue of This Week’s Finds. And as of a few weeks ago the field with one element has its own blog, “Ceci N’est Pas Un Corps.”
From a recent post on CNPUC, I learned the interesting fact that the braid group on n strands can be thought of as GL_n(F_1[t]).
So here’s a question: what is GL_n(F_1[t,1/t])?
Proposed answer below the fold.
Quomodocumque 