Related papers: Mapping class groups are not linear in positive ch…
Let $\Sigma_{g,b}$ denote a closed oriented surface genus $g$ with $b$ punctures and let $Mod_{g,b}$ denote its mapping class group. Luo proved that if the genus is at least 3, the group $Mod_{g,b}$ is generated by involutions. He also…
We introduce the notion of a neutral representation of a finite group, or finite group scheme, $G$; a representation $V$ with the property that if a gerbe $\mathcal{G}$ over a field $k$ that is a form of the classifying stack $\mathcal{B}…
Not every singular homology class is the push-forward of the fundamental class of some manifold. In the same spirit, one can study the following problem: Which singular homology classes are the push-forward of the fundamental class of a…
We give a simple construction of new, complete, finite volume manifolds $M$ of bounded, nonpositive curvature. These manifolds have ends that look like a mixture of locally symmetric ends of different ranks and their fundamental groups are…
We prove that the mapping class group of the one-holed Cantor tree surface is acyclic. This in turn determines the homology of the mapping class group of the once-punctured Cantor tree surface (i.e. the plane minus a Cantor set), in…
It is well known that Sullivan showed that the mapping class group of a simply connected high-dimensional manifold is commensurable with an arithmetic group, but the meaning of "commensurable" in this statement seems to be less well known.…
For various finitely presented groups, including right angled Artin groups and free by cyclic groups, we investigate what is the smallest dimension of a faithful linear representation. This is done both over C and over fields of positive…
Let S be an orientable surface of finite type and let Mod(S) be its mapping class group. We consider actions of Mod(S) by semisimple isometries on complete CAT(0) spaces. If the genus of S is at least 3, then in any such action all Dehn…
The possibilities for new or unusual kinds of topological, locally linear periodic maps of non-prime order on closed, simply connected 4-manifolds with positive definite intersection pairings are explored. On the one hand, certain…
The mapping class group of a surface with one boundary component admits numerous interesting representations including as a group of automorphisms of a free group and as a group of symplectic transformations. Insofar as the mapping class…
We give examples of tight high dimensional contact manifolds admitting a contactomorphism whose powers are all smoothly isotopic but not contact-isotopic to the identity. This is a generalization of an observation in dimension 3 by Gompf,…
We show that the mapping class group of any closed connected orientable surface of genus at least five is generated by only two commutators, and if the genus is three or four, by three commutators.
For a simply-connected closed manifold $X$ of $\dim X \neq 4$, the mapping class group $\pi_0(\mathrm{Diff}(X))$ is known to be finitely generated. We prove that analogous finite generation fails in dimension 4. Namely, we show that there…
Let $X$ be a surface, possibly with boundary. Suppose it has infinite genus or infinitely many punctures, or a closed subset which is a disk with a Cantor set removed from its interior. For example, $X$ could be any surface of infinite type…
Recently, John Franks and Michael Handel proved that, for $g\geq 3$ and $n\leq 2g-4$, every homomorphism from the mapping class group of an orientable surface of genus $g$ to $\GL (n,\C)$ is trivial. We extend this result to $n\leq 2g-1$,…
Let $S$ be an orientable, connected surface with infinitely-generated fundamental group. The main theorem states that if the genus of $S$ is finite and at least 4, then the isomorphism type of the pure mapping class group associated to $S$,…
We report on the computation of the integral homology of the mapping class group of genus g surfaces with one boundary curve and m punctures, when 2g + m is smaller than 6. In particular, it includes the genus 2 case with no or one…
In this article we study the space of positive scalar curvature metrics on totally nonspin manifolds with spin boundary. We prove that for such manifolds of certain dimensions, those spaces are not connected and have nontrivial fundamental…
Omori and the author have given an infinite presentation for the mapping class group of a compact non-orientable surface. In this paper, we give more simple infinite presentations for this group.
In this work we compute the first integral cohomology of the pure mapping class group of a non-orientable surface of infinite topological type and genus at least 3. To this purpose, we also prove several other results already known for…