Related papers: Braid groups, mapping class groups and their homol…

Given a smooth compact Riemannian manifold $M$ and a Hamiltonian $H$ on the cotangent space $T^*M$, strictly convex and superlinear in the momentum variables, we prove uniqueness of certain ergodic invariant Lagrangian graphs within a given…

Given a possibly reducible and non-reduced spectral cover X over a smooth projective complex curve C we determine the group of connected components of the Prym variety Prym(X/C). As an immediate application we show that the finite group of…

We consider Thompson's groups from the perspective of mapping class groups of surfaces of infinite type. This point of view leads us to the braided Thompson groups, which are extensions of Thompson's groups by infinite (spherical) braid…

The special structures that arise in symplectic topology (particularly Gromov--Witten invariants and quantum homology) place as yet rather poorly understood restrictions on the topological properties of symplectomorphism groups. This…

The cohomology of the pure string motion group PSigma_n admits a natural action by the hyperoctahedral group W_n. Church and Farb conjectured that for each k > 0, the sequence of degree k rational cohomology groups of PSigma_n is uniformly…

We study the spaces of twisted conformal blocks attached to a $\Gamma$-curve $\Sigma$ with marked $\Gamma$-orbits and an action of $\Gamma$ on a simple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$, where $\Gamma$ is a finite group. We prove that if $\Gamma$…

We give a new proof of the theorem of Birman-Powell that the Torelli subgroup of the mapping class group of a closed orientable surface of genus at least 3 is generated by simple homeomorphisms known as bounding pair maps. The key…

This article grew out of an effort to understand the smooth mapping class groups of certain 4-manifolds in a geometric manner. We prove a smooth analog of the Birman-Hilden theorem for manifolds that admit a hyperk\"ahler structure. This…

Let M_g^n be the moduli space of Riemann surfaces of genus g with n labeled marked points. We prove that, for g \geq 2, the cohomology groups {H^i(M_g^n;Q)}_{n=1}^{\infty} form a sequence of Sn representations which is representation stable…

In previous work, joint with Bux, Fluch, Marschler and Witzel, we proved that the braided Thompson groups are of type $\textrm{F}_\infty$. The proof utilized certain contractible cube complexes, which in this paper we prove are CAT(0). We…

We show that in closed string topology and in open-closed string topology with one $D$-brane, higher genus stable string operations are trivial. This is a consequence of Harer's stability theorem and related stability results on the…

Let $d \geq 2$ and $n\geq 3$ be two natural numbers. Given any sequence $\kappa=(k_1,\dots,k_n) \in \mathbb{Z}^n$ such that $\gcd(k_1,\dots,k_n,d)=1$, we consider the family of Riemann surfaces obtained from the plane curves defined by…

We show that branched coverings of surfaces of large enough genus arise as characteristic maps of braided surfaces that is, lift to embeddings in the product of the surface with $\mathbb R^2$. This result is nontrivial already for…

We introduce a new method for proving twisted homological stability, and use it to prove such results for symmetric groups and general linear groups. In addition to sometimes slightly improving the stable range given by the traditional…

We define orbifold mapping class groups (with marked points) and study them using their action on certain orbifold analogs of arcs and simple closed curves. Moreover, we establish a Birman exact sequence for suitable subgroups of orbifold…

We prove that group homology of the diffeomorphism group of $\#^g S^n \times S^n$ as a discrete group is independent of $g$ in a range, provided that $n>2$. This answers the high dimensional version of a question posed by Morita about…

We classify closed, topological spin$^+$ 4-manifolds with fundamental group $\pi$ of cohomological dimension $\leq 3$ (up to s-cobordism), after stabilization by connected sum with at most $b_3(\pi)$ copies of $S^2\times S^2$. In general we…

We show that, up to a natural equivalence relation, the only non-trivial, non-identity holomorphic maps $\mathrm{Conf}_n\mathbb{C}\to\mathrm{Conf}_m\mathbb{C}$ between unordered configuration spaces, where $m\in\{3,4\}$, are the resolving…

The purpose of this note is to clarify some details in McDuff and Segal's proof of the group-completion theorem and to generalize both this and the homology fibration criterion of McDuff to homology with twisted coefficients. This will be…

We study homological representations of mapping class groups, including the braid groups. These arise from the twisted homology of certain configuration spaces, and come in many different flavours. Our goal is to give a unified general…