Related papers: Mapping class group dynamics on Aff(C)-characters

It has been known since the time of Nielsen that the mapping class group $\text{Mod}_{g,1}$ of a surface of genus $g$ and one puncture acts faithfully by homeomorphisms on the circle. In this note, we show that this standard representation…

Starting with an O(2)-principal fibration over a closed oriented surface F_g, g>=1, a 2-fold covering of the total space is said to be special when the monodromy sends the fiber SO(2) = S^1 to the nontrivial element of Z_2. Adapting D…

This paper concerns rigidity of the mapping class groups. We show that any homomorphism $\phi:{\rm Mod}_g\to {\rm Mod}_h$ between mapping class groups of closed orientable surfaces with distinct genera $g>h$ is trivial if $g\geq 3$ and has…

Let Gamma_k be the lower central series of a surface group Gamma of a compact surface S with one boundary component. A simple question to ponder is whether a mapping class of S can be determined to be pseudo-Anosov given only the data of…

Let $M$ be a compact complex manifold. The corresponding Teichmuller space $\Teich$ is a space of all complex structures on $M$ up to the action of the group of isotopies. The group $\Gamma$ of connected components of the diffeomorphism…

Let T be a free ergodic measure-preserving action of an abelian group G on (X,mu). The crossed product algebra R_T has two distinguished masas, the image C_T of L^infty(X,mu) and the algebra S_T generated by the image of G. We conjecture…

To a proper inclusion N\subset M of II_1 factors of finite Jones index [M:N], we associate an ergodic C*-action of the quantum group S_\mu U(2). The deformation parameter is determined by -1<\mu<0 and [M:N]=|\mu+\mu^{-1}|. The higher…

This article is a report on the status of the problem of classifying the irriducibly acting subgroups of GL(n,R) that can appear as the holonomy of a torsion-free affine connection. In particular, it contains an account of the completion of…

We define a family of groups that include the mapping class group of a genus g surface with one boundary component and the integral symplectic group Sp(2g,Z). We then prove that these groups are finitely generated. These groups, which we…

In recent years, the ergodic theory of group actions on homogeneous spaces has played a significant role in the metric theory of Diophantine approximation. We survey some recent developments with special emphasis on Diophantine properties…

We consider the action of a finite subgroup of the mapping class group $Mod(S)$ of an oriented compact surface $S$ of genus $g \geq 2$ on the moduli space $\mathcal{R}(S,G)$ of representations of $\pi_1(S)$ in a connected semisimple real…

We associate a group $IMG(f)$ to every covering $f$ of a topological space $M$ by its open subset. It is the quotient of the fundamental group $\pi_1(M)$ by the intersection of the kernels of its monodromy action for the iterates $f^n$.…

We give completely combinatorial proofs of the main results of [3] using polygons. Namely, we prove that the mapping class group of a surface with boundary acts faithfully on a finitely-generated linear category. Along the way we prove some…

In this paper, we study a natural class of groups that act as affine transformations of $\mathbb T^N$. We investigate whether these solvable, "abelian-by-cyclic," groups can act smoothly and nonaffinely on $\mathbb T^N$ while remaining…

In this paper we prove that if two normal affine surfaces $S$ and $S'$ have isomorphic automorphism groups, then every connected algebraic group acting regularly and faithfully on $S$ acts also regularly and faithfully on $S'$. Moreover, if…

Let G = SL(n,R) (or, more generally, let G be a connected, noncompact, simple Lie group). For any compact Lie group K, it is easy to find a compact manifold M, such that there is a volume-preserving, connection-preserving, ergodic action of…

Let M be a one-holed torus with boundary $\partial M$ (a circle) and $\Gamma$ the mapping class group of M fixing $\partial M$. The group $\Gamma$ acts on ${\mathcal M}_{\mathcal C}(SU(2))$ which is the space of SU(2)-gauge equivalence…

We consider the relationship between hyperbolic cone-manifold structures on surfaces, and algebraic representations of the fundamental group into a group of isometries. A hyperbolic cone-manifold structure on a surface, with all interior…

We classify representations of the mapping class group of a surface of genus $g$ (with at most one puncture or boundary component) up to dimension $3g-3$. Any such representation is the direct sum of a representation in dimension $2g$ or…

This is a survey on the automorphism groups in various classes of affine algebraic surfaces and the algebraic group actions on such surfaces. Being infinite-dimensional, these automorphism groups share some important features of algebraic…