Related papers: The Birman-Hilden theory
This paper has three parts. The first part is a general introduction to rigidity and to rigid actions of mapping class group actions on various spaces. In the second part, we describe in detail four rigidity results that concern actions of…
The classical classifications of the locally isometrically deformable Euclidean hypersurfaces obtained by U. Sbrana in 1909 and E. Cartan in 1916 includes four classes, among them the one formed by submanifolds that allow just a single…
This is a continuation of an earlier preprint (math.GT/0209121) under the same title. These papers grew out of an attempt to find a suitable finite sheeted covering of an aspherical 3-manifold so that the cover either has infinite or…
A canonical branched covering over each sufficiently good simplicial complex is constructed. Its structure depends on the combinatorial type of the complex. In this way, each closed orientable 3-manifold arises as a branched covering over…
We survey recent developments on mapping class groups of surfaces of infinite topological type.
This article surveys many standard results about the braid group with emphasis on simplifying the usual algebraic proofs. We use van der Waerden's trick to illuminate the Artin-Magnus proof of the classic presentation of the algebraic…
Branched n-coverings of Riemann surfaces are described by a 2d lattice gauge theory of the symmetric group S(n) defined on a cell discretization of the surface. We study the theory in the large-n limit, and we find a rich phase diagram with…
We propose a new notion of `n-category with duals', which we call a Whitney n-category. There are two motivations. The first is that Baez and Dolan's Tangle Hypothesis is (almost) tautological when interpreted as a statement about Whitney…
We give two applications of our prior work toward the Putman-Wieland conjecture. First, we deduce a strengthening of a result of Markovi\'c-To\v{s}i\'c on virtual mapping class group actions on the homology of covers. Second, let $g\geq 2$…
In 1992, Hitchin used his theory of Higgs bundles to construct an important family of representations of the fundamental group of a closed, oriented surface of genus at least two into the split real form of a complex adjoint simple Lie…
We construct Hida and Coleman theories for the degree 0 and 1 cohomology of automorphic line bundles on the modular curve and we define a p-adic duality pairing between the theories in degree 0 and 1.
Beauville surfaces are a class of complex surfaces defined by letting a finite group $G$ act on a product of Riemann surfaces. These surfaces possess many attractive geometric properties several of which are dictated by properties of the…
The traditional approach of defining the fundamental group first and then constructing universal coverings works well only for the class of Poincar\' e spaces. For general spaces there were several attempts to define generalized coverings…
In this paper we extend general grid graphs to the grid graphs consist of polygons tiling on a plane, named polygonal grid graphs. With a cycle basis satisfied polygons tiling, we study the cyclic structure of Hamilton graphs. A Hamilton…
Molino's description of Riemannian foliations on compact manifolds is generalized to the setting of compact equicontinuous foliated spaces, in the case where the leaves are dense. In particular, a structural local group is associated to…
This work deals with relations between a bounded cohomological invariant and the geometry of Hermitian symmetric spaces of noncompact type. The invariant, obtained from the K\"ahler class, is used to define and characterize a special class…
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…
Generalising a conjecture of Singerman, it is shown that there exist orientably regular chiral hypermaps of every non-spherical type. The proof uses the representation theory of automorphism groups acting on homology and on various spaces…
This book provides a self-contained introduction to the topology and geometry of surfaces and three-manifolds. The main goal is to describe Thurston's geometrisation of three-manifolds, proved by Perelman in 2002. The book is divided into…
In this survey paper, we give a complete list of known results on the first and the second homology groups of surface mapping class groups. Some known results on higher (co)homology are also mentioned.