Related papers: Generating the Johnson filtration II: finite gener…
We prove that every term of the lower central series and Johnson filtrations of the Torelli subgroups of the mapping class group and the automorphism group of a free group is finitely generated in a linear stable range. This was originally…
Let A denote either the automorphism group of the free group of rank n>=4 or the mapping class group of an orientable surface of genus n>=12 with at most 1 boundary component, and let G be either the subgroup of IA-automorphisms or the…
For k >= 1, let Torelli_g^1(k) be the k-th term in the Johnson filtration of the mapping class group of a genus g surface with one boundary component. We prove that for all k, there exists some G_k >= 0 such that Torelli_g^1(k) is generated…
We examine the Johnson filtration of the (outer) automorphism group of a finitely generated group. In the case of a free group, we find a surprising result: the first Betti number of the second subgroup in the Johnson filtration is finite.…
Let $IA_n$ denote the group of $IA$-automorphisms of a free group of rank $n$, and let $\mathcal I_n^b$ denote the Torelli subgroup of the mapping class group of an orientable surface of genus $n$ with $b$ boundary components, $b=0,1$. In…
The action of the mapping class group $\mathrm{Mod}_g$ of an oriented surface $\Sigma_g$ on the lower central series of $\pi_1(\Sigma_g)$ defines the descending filtration in $\mathrm{Mod}_g$ called the Johnson filtration. The first two…
The Johnson filtration of the automorphism group of a free group is composed of those automorphisms which act trivially on nilpotent quotients of the free group. We compute cohomology classes as follows: (i) we analyze analogous classes for…
We show, finitely generated rational $\mathsf{VIC}_{\mathbb Q}$-modules and $\mathsf{SI}_{\mathbb Q}$-modules are uniformly representation stable and all their submodules are finitely generated. We use this to prove two conjectures of…
Let $\Gamma$ be either the mapping class group of a closed surface of genus $\geq 2$, or the automorphism group of a free group of rank $\geq 3$. Given any homological representation $\rho$ of $\Gamma$ corresponding to a finite cover, and…
In this paper we prove that the Torelli group of a surface of genus at least 3 with 2 boundary components is finitely generated. As a consequence, we answer Putman's question on the finite generation of the stabilizer subgroup of the…
In this expository note we provide a proof of Artin's theorem which states that the commutator subgroup of a free group on two generators is not finitely generated. The proof employs the infinite grid as in two other proofs in the…
Proving a conjecture of Dennis Johnson, we show that the Torelli subgroup of the mapping class group has a finite generating set whose size grows cubically with respect to the genus of the surface. Our main tool is a new space called the…
We first develop a general theory of Johnson filtrations and Johnson homomorphisms for a group $G$ acting on another group $K$ equipped with a filtration indexed by a "good" ordered commutative monoid. Then, specializing it to the case…
Let F be an infinitely generated free group and R a fully invariant subgroup of F such that (a) R is contained in the commutator subgroup F' of F and (b) the quotient group F/R is residually torsion-free nilpotent. Then the automorphism…
Let $\Sigma_g^b$ be a compact oriented surface of genus $g$ with $b$ boundary components, where $b\in\{0,1\}$. The Johnson kernel $\mathcal{K}_g^b$ is the subgroup of the mapping class group $\mathrm{Mod}(\Sigma_g^b)$ generated by Dehn…
The Johnson filtration of the mapping class group of a compact, oriented surface is the descending series consisting of the kernels of the actions on the nilpotent quotients of the fundamental group of the surface. Each term of the Johnson…
A celebrated theorem of Marshall Hall Jr. implies that finitely generated free groups are subgroup separable and that all of their finitely generated subgroups are retracts of finite-index subgroups. We use topological techniques inspired…
The existence of an infinite simple boundedly generated 2-generated group and the existence of a boundedly simple 2-generated group containing a free non-cyclic subgroup are proved.
We show that for every $N\ge 3$ the free unitary group $U^+_N$ is topologically generated by its classical counterpart $U_N$ and the lower-rank $U^+_{N-1}$. This allows for a uniform inductive proof that a number of finiteness properties,…
We prove that in every finitely generated profinite group, every subgroup of finite index is open; this implies that the topology on such groups is determined by the algebraic structure. This is deduced from the main result about finite…