Kenneth J. Shackleton

We prove a number of convexity results for strata of the diagonal pants graph of a surface, in analogy with the extrinsic geometric properties of strata in the Weil-Petersson completion. As a consequence, we exhibit convex flat subgraphs of…

For a knot $K$, Kakimizu introduced a simplicial complex whose vertices are all the isotopy classes of minimal genus spanning surfaces for $K$. The first purpose of this paper is to prove the 1-skeleton of this complex has diameter bounded…

Our main theorem identifies a class of totally geodesic subgraphs of the 1-skeleton of the pants complex, each isomorphic to the product of two Farey graphs. We deduce the existence of many convex planes in the 1-skeleton of the pants…

Our main theorem asserts that every Farey graph embedded in the 1-skeleton of the pants complex of any finite type surface is totally geodesic.

We quantify the generation of free subgroups of surface mapping class groups by pseudo-Anosov mapping classes in terms of their translation distance and the distance between their axes. Our methods make reference to \teichmuller space only.

We show that the mapping class group of an orientable finite type surface has uniformly exponential growth, as well as various closely related groups. This provides further evidence that mapping class groups may be linear.

We give a combinatorial criterion that implies both the non-strong relative hyperbolicity and the one-endedness of a finitely generated group. We use this to show that many important classes of groups do not admit a strong relatively…

In all possible cases, we prove that local embeddings between two curve complexes whose complexities do not increase from domain to codomain are induced by surface homeomorphism. This is our first main result. From this we can deduce our…

We give explicit bounds on the intersection number between any curve on a tight multigeodesic and the two ending curves. We use this to construct all tight multigeodesics and so conclude that distances in the curve graph are computable. The…