Related papers: Mapping class groups of covers with boundary and b…
We introduce "braided" versions of self-similar groups and R\"over--Nekrashevych groups, and study their finiteness properties. This generalizes work of Aroca and Cumplido, and the first author and Wu, who considered the case when the…
We construct new monomorphisms between mapping class groups of surfaces. The first family of examples injects the mapping class group of a closed surface into that of a different closed surface. The second family of examples are defined on…
We show that a large class of right-angled Artin groups (in particular, those with planar complementary defining graph) can be embedded quasi-isometrically in pure braid groups and in the group of area preserving diffeomorphisms of the disk…
We prove that many normal subgroups of the extended mapping class group of a surface with punctures are geometric, that is, that their automorphism groups and abstract commensurator groups are isomorphic to the extended mapping class group.…
A near-group category is an additively semisimple category with a product such that all but one of the simple objects is invertible. We classify braided structures on near-group categories, and give explicit numerical formulas for their…
Hierarchically hyperbolic spaces provide a common framework for studying mapping class groups of finite type surfaces, Teichm\"uller space, right-angled Artin groups, and many other cubical groups. Given such a space $\mathcal X$, we build…
We survey recent developments on mapping class groups of surfaces of infinite topological type.
Consider the unit ball, B = D x [0,1], containing n unknotted arcs a_1, ... a_n such that the boundary of each a_i lies in D x {0}. We give a finite presentation for the mapping class group of B fixing the arcs {a_1, ..., a_n} setwise and…
We examine the structure of Farey maps, which are a class of maps (graph embeddings on surfaces) that have received significant attention recently. We describe how they are related to each other through regular coverings and parallel…
The space of unordered configurations of distinct points in the plane is aspherical, with Artin's braid group as its fundamental group. Remarkably enough, the space of ordered configurations of distinct points on the real projective line,…
Let $S$ be a connected non-orientable surface with negative Euler characteristic and of finite type. We describe the possible closures in $\mathcal M\mathcal L$ and $\mathcal P\mathcal M\mathcal L$ of the mapping class group orbits of…
We compute the mapping class group-valued monodromy of any sufficiently ample linear system on any smooth simply connected projective surface, identifying this with the r-spin mapping class group associated to a maximal root of the adjoint…
In this paper we construct a faithful representation of the mapping class group of the genus two surface into a group of matrices over the complex numbers. Our starting point is the Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid group B_n,…
The balanced superelliptic mapping class group is the normalizer of the transformation group of the balanced superelliptic covering space in the mapping class group of the total surface. We give finite presentations for the balanced…
The spaces of triangulations of a given manifold have been widely studied. The celebrated theorem of Pachner~\cite{Pachner} says that any two triangulations of a given manifold can be connected by a sequence of bistellar moves, or Pachner…
S. Gervais gave a finite presentation for the mapping class group of a surface (math.GT/9811162). We show this presentation without using Wajnryb's simple presentation. We use a complex of curves defined by Harvey, in place of Hatcher and…
We prove that the symplectic group $Sp(2n,\mathbb Z)$ and the mapping class group $Mod_{S}$ of a compact surface $S$ satisfy the $R_{\infty}$ property. We also show that $B_n(S)$, the full braid group on $n$-strings of a surface $S$,…
We focus on two kinds of infinite index subgroups of the mapping class group of a surface associated with a Lagrangian submodule of the first homology of a surface. These subgroups, called Lagrangian mapping class groups, are known to play…
In this paper, we survey recent works on the structure of the mapping class groups of surfaces mainly from the point of view of topology. We then discuss several possible directions for future research. These include the relation between…
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.