Related papers: The classification of the virtually cyclic subgrou…

The Subgroup Isomorphism Problem for Integral Group Rings asks for which finite groups U it is true that if U is isomorphic to a subgroup of V(ZG), the group of normalized units of the integral group ring of the finite group G, it must be…

We consider the space of all configurations of finitely many (potentially nested) circles in the plane. We prove that this space is aspherical, and compute the fundamental group of each of its connected components. It turns out these…

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 give a classification of integral lattices with virtually abelian symmetry group. As a consequence, we complete the classification of K3 surfaces with virtually abelian automorphism group. In the appendix we formulate an algorithm for…

We study two problems concerning the Stiefel manifolds $V_{n,2}$ and their products with spheres. First, we address a rigidity problem: we determine, for most values of~$n$, all self-maps of $V_{n,2}$ that are homotopic to an almost…

We define pseudo-Garside groups and prove a theorem about them parallel to Garside's result on the word problem for the usual braid groups. The main novelty is that the set of simple elements can be infinite. We introduce a group B=B(Z^n)…

We consider "Thurston maps": branched self-coverings of the sphere with ultimately periodic critical points, and prove that the Thurston equivalence problem between them (continuous deformation of maps along with their critical orbits) is…

This paper proves the sandwich classification conjecture for subgroups of an even dimensional hyperbolic unitary group $U_{2n}(R,\Lambda)$ which are normalized by the elementary subgroup $EU_{2n}(R,\Lambda)$, under the condition that $R$ is…

The mod 2 cohomology algebra of the holomorph of any finite cyclic group whose order is a power of 2 is determined.

We algorithmically compute integral Eilenberg-MacLane homology of all semigroups of order at most $8$ and present some particular semigroups with notable classifying spaces, refuting conjectures of Nico. Along the way, we give an…

Totally symmetric sets are a recently introduced tool for studying homomorphisms between groups. In this paper, we give full classifications of totally symmetric sets in certain families of groups and bound their sizes in others. As a…

Given a group $G$ and an integer $n \geq 0$, let $\mathcal{F}_n$ denote the family of all virtually abelian subgroups of $G$ of rank at most $n$. In this article, we show that for each $n \geq 1$, the minimal dimension of a model for the…

In this paper we construct a faithful representation of the mapping class group of the genus two surface into a group of matrices over the complex numbers. Our starting point is the Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid group B_n,…

We apply some methods of homology and K-theory to special classes of branes wrapping homologically nontrivial cycles. We treat the classification of four-geometries in terms of compact stabilizers (by analogy with Thurston's classification…

The concordance group of knots in the three-sphere contains an infinite subgroup generated by elements of order two, each one of which is represented by a knot K with the property that for every n > 0, the n-fold cyclic cover of S^3…

We describe a natural isomorphism between the set of equivalence classes of pseudocycles and the integral homology groups of a smooth manifold. Our arguments generalize to settings well-suited for applications in enumerative algebraic…

We study the large-scale geometry of graph braid groups $\mathbb{B}_n(\mathsf{\Gamma})$, viewed as the fundamental groups of discrete configuration spaces $UD_n(\mathsf{\Gamma})$, which are special cube complexes in the sense of…

In this note we solve the twisted conjugacy problem for braid groups, i.e. we propose an algorithm which, given two braids $u,v\in B_n$ and an automorphism $\phi \in Aut (B_n)$, decides whether $v=(\phi (x))^{-1}ux$ for some $x\in B_n$. As…

We prove that every finitely-generated group of homeomorphisms of the 2-dimensional sphere all of whose elements have a finite order which is a power of 2 and so that there exists a uniform bound for the order of group elements is finite.…

We show that mapping class groups associated to all types of real algebraic curves are virtual duality groups. We also deduce some results about the orbifold homotopy groups of the moduli spaces of real algebraic curves. We achieve these…