Related papers: The Goldman bracket characterizes homeomorphisms

We show that a homotopy equivalence between two non-compact orientable surfaces is homotopic to a homeomorphism if and only if it preserves the Goldman bracket, provided our surfaces are neither the plane nor the punctured plane.

We give a short, mostly elementary and self-contained proof of the classical result that the groups of diffeomorphisms, homeomorphisms, and homotopy equivalences of a surface have the same group of connected components.

Let $S$ be a complete flat surface, such as the Euclidean plane. We determine the homeomorphism class of the space of all curves on $S$ which start and end at given points in given directions and whose curvatures are constrained to lie in a…

We prove that for any non-compact connected surface $M$ the group $H_c(M)$ of compactly suported homeomorphisms of $M$ endowed with the Whitney topology is homeomorphic to $R^\infty\times l_2$ or $Z\times R^\infty\times l_2$.

Let $f\colon M\to N$ be a proper map between two aspherical compact orientable 3-manifolds with empty or toroidal boundary. We assume that $N$ is not a closed graph-manifold. Suppose that $f$ induces an epimorphism on fundamental groups. We…

We classify, up to homeomorphism, all closed manifolds having the homotopy type of a connected sum of two copies of real projective n-space.

We extend the proof of automatic continuity for homeomorphism groups of manifolds to non-compact manifolds and manifolds with marked points and their mapping class groups. Specifically, we show that, for any manifold $M$ homeomorphic to the…

We show that finite-type surfaces are characterized by a topological analog of the Hopf property. Namely, an oriented surface $\Sigma$ is of finite-type if and only if every proper map $f\colon\Sigma\to \Sigma$ of degree one is homotopic to…

We show that, for a closed non-orientable surface $F$, an automorphism of $H_1(F,\Z)$ is induced by a homeomorphism of $F$ if and only if it preserves the (mod 2) intersection pairing. We shall also prove the corresponding result for…

We demonstrate that the proper homotopy equivalence relation for locally finite graphs is Borel complete. Furthermore, among the infinite graphs, there is a comeager equivalence class. As corollaries, we obtain the analogous results for the…

The closure of a braid in a closed orientable surface $\Sigma$ is a link in $\Sigma\times S^1$. We classify such closed surface braids up to isotopy and homeomorphism (with a small indeterminacy for isotopy of closed sphere braids),…

We show that every orientable infinite-type surface is properly rigid as a consequence of a more general result. Namely, we prove that if a homotopy equivalence between any two non-compact orientable surfaces is a proper map, then it is…

A homeomorphism of a compact metric space is {\em tight} provided every non-degenerate compact connected (not necessarily invariant) subset carries positive entropy. It is shown that every $C^{1+\alpha}$ diffeomorphism of a closed surface…

We show that the homeomorphism group of a surface without boundary does not admit a Hausdorff group topology strictly coarser than the compact-open topology. In combination with known automatic continuity results, this implies that the…

A pair of distinct free homotopy classes of closed curves in an orientable surface $F$ with negative Euler characteristic is said to be length equivalent if for any hyperbolic structure on $F$, the length of the geodesic representative of…

We show that a homeomorphism of a semi-locally connected compact metric space is equicontinuous if and only if the distance between the iterates of a given point and a given subcontinuum (not containing that point) is bounded away from…

A homotopy equivalence between a hyperbolic 3-manifold and a closed irreducible 3-manifold is homotopic to a homeomorphsim provided the hyperbolic manifold satisfies a purely geometric condition. There are no known examples of hyperbolic…

Suppose M is a noncompact connected PL 2-manifold and let H(M)_0 denote the identity component of the homeomorphism group of M with the compact-open topology. In this paper we classify the homotopy type of H(M)_0 by showing that {\cal…

We investigate the mapping class group of an orientable $\omega$-bounded surface. Such a surface splits, by Nyikos's Bagpipe Theorem, into a union of a bag (a compact surface with boundary) and finitely many long pipes. The subgroup…

We consider the topological category of $h$-cobordisms between manifolds with boundary and compare its homotopy type with the standard $h$-cobordism space of a compact smooth manifold.