Related papers: Stein-fillability and positivity in the mapping cl…
We show: If a bounded domain in a Stein space covers a compact complex space, it must be smooth. This give a negative answer to a question of Koll\'ar. Furthermore, we deduce some related results.
Monodromy in analytic families of smooth complex surfaces yields groups of isotopy classes of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms for each family member X. For all deformation classes of minimal elliptic surfaces with p_g>q=0, we…
A left orderable completely metrizable topological group is exhibited containing Artin's braid group on infinitely many strands. The group is the mapping class group (rel boundary) of the closed unit disk with a sequence of interior…
We study monodromies of plane curve singularities and pseudo-periodic homeomorphisms of oriented surfaces with boundary, following an original idea of the first author: t\^ete-\`a-t\^ete graphs and twists. We completely characterize mapping…
We prove that on closed Riemannian manifolds with infinite abelian, but not cyclic, fundamental group, any isometry that is homotopic to the identity possesses infinitely many invariant geodesics. We conjecture that the result remains true…
In this paper we consider the action of the mapping class group of a surface on the space of homomorphisms from the fundamental group of a surface into PSL(2,R). Goldman conjectured that when the surface is closed and of genus bigger than…
Let $\Sigma$ be a surface whose interior admits a hyperbolic structure of finite volume. In this paper, we show that any infinite order mapping class acts with infinite order on the homology of some universal $k$--step nilpotent cover of…
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…
We study smooth proper embeddings of compact orientable surfaces in compact orientable $4$-manifolds and elements in the mapping class group of that surface which are induced by diffeomorphisms of the ambient $4$-manifolds. We call such…
It is proved that the mapping class group of any closed surface with finitely many marked points is quasiisometric to a CAT(0) cube complex. We provide two distinct proofs, one tailored to mapping class groups, and one applying to a larger…
We provide an equivariant description/classification of all complete (compact or not) non-negatively curved manifolds M together with a co-compact action by a reflection group W, and moreover, classify such W. In particular, we show that…
The aim of this paper is to give an alternative proof of a theorem about the existence of contact structures on five-manifolds due to Geiges. This theorem asserts that simply-connected five-manifolds admit a contact structure in every…
Given a link of a normal surface singularity with its canonical contact structure, we compare the collection of its Stein fillings to its Milnor fillings (that is, Milnor fibers of possible smoothings). We prove that, unlike Stein fillings,…
We compute the topological mapping class group of every compact, simply connected, topological 4-manifold. This was previously only known in the closed case. If the 4-manifold is smooth, we deduce an analogous description of the stable…
We study diffeomorphisms of compact, oriented surfaces, developing methods of distinguishing those which have positive factorizations into Dehn twists from those which satisfy the weaker condition of right veering. We use these to construct…
Given an oriented surface of positive genus with finitely many punctures, we classify the finite orbits of the mapping class group action on the moduli space of semisimple complex special linear two dimensional representations of the…
We give an algorithm which produces infinitely many pairwise exotic Stein fillings of the same contact 3-manifolds, applying positive allowable Lefschetz fibrations over the disk. As a corollary, for a large class of Stein fillings, we…
In this paper we study regular irreducible algebraic monoids over $\fldc$ equipped with the euclidean topology. It is shown that, in such monoids, the Green classes and the spaces of idempotents in the Green classes all have natural…
We study the topology of exact and Stein fillings of the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of a closed surface $\Sigma_g$, where $g$ is at least 2. In particular, we prove a uniqueness theorem asserting that any Stein…
Let $g, n \geq 0$ and $\Sigma = \Sigma_{g, n}$ be a connected oriented surface of genus $g$ with $n$ punctures. The $\mathrm{SL}_2$-character variety of $\Sigma$ has a rigid relative automorphism group, whose elements fix each monodromies…