Related papers: Flat bundles and commutator lengths

The paper combines several fortunate mini miracles to achieve its two objectives. These were woven together in a several year's effort to answer a question raised by Iz Singer a decade ago. Our answer is accessible to the topologist, to the…

Let $X$ be a K3 surface, let $C$ be a smooth curve of genus $g$ on $X$, and let $A$ be a base point free and primitive line bundle $g_d^r$ on $C$ with $d\geq4$ and $r\geq\sqrt{\frac{d}{2}}$. In this paper, we prove that if $g>2d-3+(r-1)^2$,…

We study the normal closure of a big power of one or several Dehn twists in a Mapping Class Group. We prove that it has a presentation whose relators consists only of commutators between twists of disjoint support, thus answering a question…

Let $(X,L)$ be an $n$-dimensional polarized variety. Fujita's conjecture says that if $L^n>1$ then the adjoint bundle $K_X+nL$ is spanned and $K_X+(n+1)L$ is very ample. There are some examples such that $K_X+nL$ is not spanned or…

This paper contains two topics, the index of a power subgroup in the mapping class group $\mathcal{M}(0,2n)$ of a $2n$-punctured sphere and in the hyperelliptic mapping class group $\Delta(g,0)$ of an oriented closed surface of genus $g$.…

We show that the morphisms from the braid group with n strands in the mapping class group of a surface with a possible non empty boundary, assuming that its genus is smaller or equal to n/2 are either cyclic morphisms (their images are…

A strong interaction is known to exist between edge-colored graphs (which encode PL pseudo-manifolds of arbitrary dimension) and random tensor models (as a possible approach to the study of Quantum Gravity). The key tool is the {\it…

We define metric bundles/metric graph bundles which provide a purely topological/coarse-geometric generalization of the notion of trees of metric spaces a la Bestvina-Feighn in the special case that the inclusions of the edge spaces into…

In the ongoing programme to classify noncommutative projective surfaces (connected graded noetherian domains of Gelfand-Kirillov dimension three) a natural question is to determine the minimal models within any birational class. In this…

For each pair of integers g at least 2 and h at least 1, we explicitly construct infinitely many fiber sum and section sum indecomposable genus g surface bundles over genus h surfaces whose total spaces are pairwise homotopy inequivalent.

We study free boundary minimal surfaces in the unit ball of low cohomogeneity. For each pair of positive integers $(m,n)$ such that $m, n >1$ and $m+n\geq 8$, we construct a free boundary minimal surface $\Sigma_{m, n} \subset B^{m+n}$(1)…

Let S be a K3 surface and assume for simplicity that it does not contain any (-2)-curve. Using coherent systems, we express every non-simple Lazarsfeld-Mukai bundle on S as an extension of two sheaves of some special type, that we refer to…

Let H be a subgroup of some locally compact group G. Assume H is approximable by discrete subgroups and G admits neighborhood bases which are "almost-invariant" under conjugation by finite subsets of H. Let $m: G \to \mathbb{C}$ be a…

Given a compact Riemann surface $\Sigma$ of genus $g_\Sigma\, \geq\, 2$, and an effective divisor $D\, =\, \sum_i n_i x_i$ on $\Sigma$ with $\text{degree}(D)\, <\, 2(g_\Sigma -1)$, there is a unique cone metric on $\Sigma$ of constant…

We construct examples of Lefschetz fibrations with prescribed singular fibers. By taking differences of pairs of such fibrations with the same singular fibers, we obtain new examples of surface bundles over surfaces with non-zero signature.…

In a series of papers we have been studying the geometric theta correspondence for non-compact arithmetic quotients of symmetric spaces associated to orthogonal groups. It is our overall goal to develop a general theory of geometric theta…

Bowden, Hensel, and Webb constructed infinitely many quasimorphisms on the diffeomorphism groups of orientable surfaces. In this paper, we extend their result to nonorientable surfaces. Namely, we prove that the space of nontrivial…

Kapustin and Witten showed that a twisted version of N=4 gauge theory in four dimensions compactifies to a two-dimensional sigma-model whose target space is the Hitchin moduli space. In this talk, I consider the reduction of the gauge…

Using the work of Dwyer, Weiss, and Williams we associate an invariant to any topologically trivial family of smooth h-cobordisms. This invariant is called the smooth structure class, and is closely related to the higher Franz--Reidemeister…

The main goal of this article is to construct some geometric invariants for the topology of the set $\mathcal{F}$ of flat connections on a principal $G$-bundle $P\,\longrightarrow\, M$. Although the characteristic classes of principal…