Related papers: Mapping Class Groups do not have Kazhdan's Propert…

The genus spectrum of a finite group $G$ is the set of all $g\geq 2$ such that $G$ acts faithfully and orientation-preserving on a closed compact orientable surface of genus $g$. This article is an overview of some results relating the…

In this note we prove that there is no constant $C$, depending on the genus of the surface, such that every element in the mapping class group can be written as a product of at most $C$ torsion elements, answering a question of T. E.…

We survey recent developments on mapping class groups of surfaces of infinite topological type.

Let S be an orientable surface of finite type and let Mod(S) be its mapping class group. We consider actions of Mod(S) by semisimple isometries on complete CAT(0) spaces. If the genus of S is at least 3, then in any such action all Dehn…

Birman-Lubotzky-McCarthy proved that any abelian subgroup of the mapping class groups for orientable surfaces is finitely generated. We apply Birman-Lubotzky-McCarthy's arguments to the mapping class groups for non-orientable surfaces. We…

Let $N$ be a closed nonorientable surface with or without marked points. In this paper we prove that, for every finite full subgraph $\Gamma$ of $\mathcal{C}^{\mathrm{two}}(N)$, the right-angled Artin group on $\Gamma$ can be embedded in…

A crosscap transposition is an element of the mapping class group of a nonorientable surface represented by a homeomorphism supported on a one-holed Klein bottle and swapping two crosscaps. We prove that the mapping class group of a compact…

We show that $\mathcal{U}(\mathbb{Z}G)$, the unit group of the integral group ring $\mathbb{Z} G$, either satisfies Kazhdan's property (T) or is, up to commensurability, a non-trivial amalgamated product, in case $G$ is a finite group…

We prove that rationally essential manifolds with suitably large fundamental groups do not admit any maps of non-zero degree from products of closed manifolds of positive dimension. Particular examples include all manifolds of non-positive…

Given a finite set of $r$ points in a closed surface of genus $g$, we consider the torsion elements in the mapping class group of the surface leaving the finite set invariant. We show that the torsion elements generate the mapping class…

Artin groups of finite type are not as well understood as braid groups. This is due to the additional geometric properties of braid groups coming from their close connection to mapping class groups. For each Artin group of finite type, we…

We give new upper bounds on the stable commutator lengths of Dehn twists in mapping class groups and new lower bounds on the stable commutator lengths of Dehn twists in hyperelliptic mapping class groups. In particular, we show that the…

Let $\rm{Mod(S)}$ be the mapping class group of a closed orientable surface $S$ of genus $g \geq 2$. Let $G$ be a non-elementary subgroup of $\rm{Mod(S)}$ so that the associated Bowen-Margulis measure is finite. In this paper, we give an…

In this paper we prove that there does not exist a subgroup $H$ of a finite group $G$ such that the number of isomorphism classes of normalized right transversals of $H$ in $G$ is four.

Gromov constructed uncountably many pairwise non-isomorphic discrete groups with Kazhdan's property (T). We will show that no separable II_1-factor can contain all these groups in its unitary group. In particular, no separable II_1-factor…

Using functional and harmonic analysis methods, we study Kazhdan sets in topological groups which do not necessarily have Property (T). We provide a new criterion for a generating subset $Q$ of a group $G$ to be a Kazhdan set; it relies on…

Let $T$ be a staircase rank-one construction with parameters $r_j \sim j^d$, $0<d<0.2$, then its spectrum does not have the group property, and the symmetric tensor product $T\odot T$ has simple spectrum.

Let $N_{g,n}$ denote the nonorientable surface of genus $g$ with $n$ boundary components and $M(N_{g,n})$ its mapping class group. We obtain an explicit finite presentation of $M(N_{g,n})$ for $n=0,1$ and all $g$ such that $g+n>3$.

We show that central extensions of the mapping class group $M_g$ of the closed orientable surface of genus $g$ by $\Z$ are residually finite. Further we give rough estimates of the largest $N=N_g$ such that homomorphisms from $M_g$ to SU(N)…

Let $S$ be an orientable, connected surface with infinitely-generated fundamental group. The main theorem states that if the genus of $S$ is finite and at least 4, then the isomorphism type of the pure mapping class group associated to $S$,…