English

Arbitrarily Long Factorizations in Mapping Class Groups

Geometric Topology 2014-08-27 v3

Abstract

On a compact oriented surface of genus gg with n1n\geq 1 boundary components, δ1,δ2,,δn\delta_1, \delta_2,\ldots, \delta_n, we consider positive factorizations of the boundary multitwist tδ1tδ2tδnt_{\delta_1} t_{\delta_2} \cdots t_{\delta_n}, where tδit_{\delta_i} is the positive Dehn twist about the boundary δi\delta_i. We prove that for g3g\geq 3, the boundary multitwist tδ1tδ2t_{\delta_1} t_{\delta_2} can be written as a product of arbitrarily large number of positive Dehn twists about nonseparating simple closed curves, extending a recent result of Baykur and Van Horn-Morris, who proved this result for g8g\geq 8. This fact has immediate corollaries on the Euler characteristics of the Stein fillings of conctact three manifolds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1309.3778,
  title  = {Arbitrarily Long Factorizations in Mapping Class Groups},
  author = {Elif Dalyan and Mustafa Korkmaz and Mehmetcik Pamuk},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.3778},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

13 pages, 4 figures, a few typos are corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-22T01:27:24.820Z