Related papers: Homological representations of low genus mapping c…

Deformation spaces Hom($\pi$,G)/G of representations of the fundamental group $\pi$ of a surface $\Sigma$ in a Lie group $G$ admit natural actions of the mapping class group $Mod_\Sigma$, preserving a Poisson structure. When $G$ is compact,…

We show that central extensions of the mapping class group $M_g$ of the closed orientable surface of genus $g$ by $\Z$ are residually finite. Further we give rough estimates of the largest $N=N_g$ such that homomorphisms from $M_g$ to SU(N)…

Given a group $G$ of automorphisms of a matroid $M$, we describe the representations of $G$ on the homology of the independence complex of the dual matroid $M^*$. These representations are related with the homology of the lattice of flats…

Let G be a connected semisimple Lie group such that the associated symmetric space X is Hermitian and let Gamma be the fundamental group of a compact orientable surface of genus at least 2. We survey the study of maximal representations,…

Let C be a complex smooth projective algebraic curve endowed with an action of a finite group G such that the quotient curve has genus at least 3. We prove that if the G-curve C is very general for these properties, then the natural map…

For any infinite-type surface $S$, a natural question is whether the homology of its mapping class group contains any non-trivial classes that are supported on (i) a compact subsurface or (ii) a finite-type subsurface. Our purpose here is…

This paper is about cohomology of mapping class groups from the perspective of arithmetic groups. For a closed surface $S$ of genus $g$, the mapping class group $Mod(S)$ admits a well-known arithmetic quotient $Mod(S)\rightarrow Sp(2g, Z)$,…

In this chapter we give a geometric representation of $H_{n}(B;\mathbb{L})$ classes, where $\mathbb{L}$ is the $4$-periodic surgery spectrum, by establishing a relationship between the normal cobordism classes…

We exhibit a finitely generated group $\M$ whose rational homology is isomorphic to the rational stable homology of the mapping class group. It is defined as a mapping class group associated to a surface $\su$ of infinite genus, and…

Let $\Gamma$ be a finitely generated nilpotent group and let G be a complex reductive algebraic group. The representation variety $\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)$ and the character variety $\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma,G)//G$ each carry a natural topology,…

We study the action of (big) mapping class groups on the first homology of the corresponding surface. We give a precise characterization of the image of the induced homology representation.

Let S be a compact oriented surface. A homology cobordism of S is a cobordism C between two copies of S, such that both the "top" inclusion and the "bottom" inclusion of S in C induce isomorphisms in homology. Homology cobordisms of S form…

We consider numerical semigroups associated with normal weighted homogeneous surface singularities with rational homology sphere links. We say that a semigroup is representable if it can be realized in this way. In this article, we study…

In this series of papers, we investigate properties of a finite group which are determined by its low degree irreducible representations over a number field $F$, i.e. its representations on matrix rings $\operatorname{M}_n(D)$ with $n \leq…

Let $p:S\to S_g$ be a finite $G$-covering of a closed surface of genus $g\geq 1$ and let $B$ its branch locus. To this data, it is associated a representation of a finite index subgroup of the mapping class group…

We investigate the representation of a symmetric group $S_n$ on the homology of its Quillen complex at a prime $p$. For homology groups in small codimension, we derive an explicit formula for this representation in terms of the…

Let $G$ be an almost linear Nash group, namely, a Nash group that admits a Nash homomorphism with finite kernel to some $\GL_k(\mathbb R)$. A smooth \Fre representation $V$ with moderate growth of $G$ is called homologically finite if the…

Motivated by the Lawrence-Krammer-Bigelow representations of the classical braid groups, we study the homology of unordered configurations in an orientable genus-$g$ surface with one boundary component, over non-commutative local systems…

For a compact surface $S = S_{g,n}$ with $3g + n \geq 4$, we introduce a family of unitary representations of the mapping class group Mod($S$) based on the space of measured foliations. For this family of representations, we show that none…

A consequence of Rapinchuk et al. is that for $S$ a closed surface of genus $g\geq 2$, the set of Hitchin representations of $\pi_1(S)$ with image in $\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{Q})$ is dense in the Hitchin component. We give a dynamical proof…