Related papers: Mapping class groups are not linear in positive ch…

Any nontrivial homomorphism from the mapping class group of an orientable surface of genus $g\geq 3$ to $\GL(2g,\C)$ is conjugate to the standard symplectic representation. It is also shown that the mapping class group has no faithful…

By recognizing them as fundamental groups of developable complexes of groups we prove that mapping class groups of compact orientable surfaces have finite asymptotic dimension.

Given an oriented surface of positive genus with finitely many punctures, we classify the finite orbits of the mapping class group action on the moduli space of semisimple complex special linear two dimensional representations of the…

Let $g, n \geq 0$ and $\Sigma = \Sigma_{g, n}$ be a connected oriented surface of genus $g$ with $n$ punctures. The $\mathrm{SL}_2$-character variety of $\Sigma$ has a rigid relative automorphism group, whose elements fix each monodromies…

By considering appropriate finite covering spaces of closed non-orientable surfaces, we construct linear representations of their mapping class group which have finite index image in certain big arithmetic groups.

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…

In this note we prove that the mapping class group of a compact topological manifold $M$ with boundary is of finite type, under assumptions on its dimension and connectivity.

Let $\Sigma$ be a compact orientable surface of finite type with at least one boundary component. Let $\Gamma \leq \textup{Mod}(\Sigma)$ be a non virtually solvable subgroup. We answer a question of Lubotzky by showing that there exists a…

Let $\phi \in {\rm Mod}(\Sigma)$ be an arbitrary element of the mapping class group of a closed orientable surface $\Sigma$ of genus at least $2$. For any characteristic cover $\widetilde{\Sigma} \to \Sigma$ one can consider the linear…

We consider linear groups which do not contain unipotent elements of infinite order, which includes all linear groups in positive characteristic, and show that this class of groups has good properties which resemble those held by groups of…

For any infinite-type surface $S$, a natural question is whether the homology of its mapping class group contains any non-trivial classes that are supported on (i) a compact subsurface or (ii) a finite-type subsurface. Our purpose here is…

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…

It is shown, that the mapping class group of a surface of the genus g > 1 admits a faithful representation into the matrix group GL (6g-6, Z). The proof is based on a categorical correspondence between the Riemann surfaces and the so-called…

Finite presentations for the mapping class group M(F) are known for arbitrary orientable compact surface F. If F is non-orientable, then such presentations are known only when F has genus at most 3 and few boundary components. In this paper…

We show that certain representations over fields with positive characteristic of groups having CAT(0) fixed point property ${\rm F}\mathcal{B}_{\widetilde{A}_n}$ have finite image. In particular, we obtain rigidity results for…

Deformation spaces Hom($\pi$,G)/G of representations of the fundamental group $\pi$ of a surface $\Sigma$ in a Lie group $G$ admit natural actions of the mapping class group $Mod_\Sigma$, preserving a Poisson structure. When $G$ is compact,…

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…

We show that a linear group without unipotent elements of infinite order possesses properties akin to those held by groups of non positive curvature. Moreover in positive characteristic any finitely generated linear group acts properly and…

We show that the mapping class group of an orientable finite type surface has uniformly exponential growth, as well as various closely related groups. This provides further evidence that mapping class groups may be linear.

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)…