Related papers: Surface Houghton groups

It is a classical result of Powell that pure mapping class groups of connected, orientable surfaces of finite type and genus at least three are perfect. In stark contrast, we construct nontrivial homomorphisms from infinite-genus mapping…

We construct examples of finite covers of punctured surfaces where the first rational homology is not spanned by lifts of simple closed curves. More generally, for any set $\mathcal{O} \subset F_n$ which is contained in the union of…

We investigate representations of mapping class groups of surfaces that arise from the untwisted Drinfeld double of a finite group G, focusing on surfaces without marked points or with one marked point. We obtain concrete descriptions of…

We investigate the mapping class groups of a class of non-Hausdorff topological spaces which includes finite spaces. We show that the mapping class group of a finite space is isomorphic to the homeomorphism group of its $T_0$ quotient. As a…

We prove a result that relates the number of homomorphisms from the fundamental group of a compact nonorientable surface to a finite group $G$, where conjugacy classes of the boundary components of the surface must map to prescribed…

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…

We ask if any finite type generalized braid group is a subgroup of some classical Artin braid group. We define a natural map from a given finite type generalized braid group to a classical braid group and ask if this map is an injective…

We consider the universal family $E_n^d$ of superelliptic curves: each curve $\Sigma_n^d$ in the family is a $d$-fold covering of the unit disk, totally ramified over a set $P$ of $n$ distinct points; $\Sigma_n^d\hookrightarrow E_n^d\to…

The mapping class group of a surface with one boundary component admits numerous interesting representations including as a group of automorphisms of a free group and as a group of symplectic transformations. Insofar as the mapping class…

For each integer n\ge 2, we construct an irreducible, smooth, complex projective variety M of dimension n, whose fundamental group has infinitely generated homology in degree n+1 and whose universal cover is a Stein manifold, homotopy…

We construct braided versions $sV_{br}$ of the Brin-Thompson groups $sV$ and prove that they are of type $F_\infty$. The proof involves showing that the matching complexes of colored arcs on surfaces are highly connected.

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…

Classes of branched surfaces extend the classes of surfaces or 2-dimensional manifolds satisfying suitable properties and defined in various manners. Reeb spaces of smooth maps of suitable classes into surfaces whose codimensions are…

We solve the isomorphism problem for braid groups on trees with $n = 4$ or 5 strands. We do so in three main steps, each of which is interesting in its own right. First, we establish some tools and terminology for dealing with computations…

In this paper we define a new family of groups which generalize the {\it classical braid groups on} $\C $. We denote this family by $\{B_n^m\}_{n \ge m+1}$ where $n,m \in \N$. The family $\{ B_n^1 \}_{n \in \N}$ is the set of classical…

We study the first homology group of the mapping class group and Torelli group with coefficients in the first rational homology group of the universal abelian cover of the surface. We prove two contrasting results: for surfaces with one…

Let M be a compact, connected non-orientable surface without boundary and of genus g greater than or equal to 3. We investigate the pure braid groups P_n(M) of M, and in particular the possible splitting of the Fadell-Neuwirth short exact…

The result of this paper is the determination of the cohomology of Artin groups of type A_n, B_n and \tilde{A}_{n} with non-trivial local coefficients. The main result is an explicit computation of the cohomology of the Artin group of type…

In this paper, we briefly review some of the known results concerning the cohomological structures of the mapping class group of surfaces, the outer automorphism group of free groups, the diffeomorphism group of surfaces as well as various…

Mapping class groups of Haken 3-manifolds enjoy many of the homological finiteness properties of mapping class groups of 2-manifolds of finite type. For example, H(M) has a torsionfree subgroup of finite index, which is geometrically finite…