Related papers: Geometric representations of the braid group on a …

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…

We prove that, except in certain low-complexity cases, the automorphism group of the graph of pants decompositions of a nonorientable surface is isomorphic to the mapping class group of that surface.

For a genus g handlebody H a simplicial complex, with vertices being isotopy classes of certain incompressible surfaces in H, is constructed and several properties are established. In particular, this complex naturally contains, as a…

Let $\Gamma_{g,1}^m$ be the mapping class group of the orientable surface $\Sigma_{g,1}^m$ of genus $g$ with one parametrised boundary curve and $m$ permutable punctures; when $m=0$ we omit it from the notation. Let…

Let $N_{g,n}$ be an $n$--punctured non--orientable surface of genus $g$ with one boundary component. For $g\geq 2$ one of the generators of the mapping class group of $N_{g,n}$ is a crosscap transposition. We give explicit formulae for the…

The braid groups B_n can be defined as the mapping class group of the n-punctured disc. The Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid group B_n is the induced action on a certain twisted second homology of the space of unordered pairs of…

Braid groups are an important and flexible tool used in several areas of science, such as Knot Theory (Alexander's theorem), Mathematical Physics (Yang-Baxter's equation) and Algebraic Geometry (monodromy invariants). In this note we will…

We study the problem of finding generators for the fundamental group G of a space of the following sort: one removes a family of complex hyperplanes from n dimensional complex vector space, or n dimensional complex hyperbolic space, or the…

Counting homomorphisms between cyclic groups is a common exercise in a first course in abstract algebra. A similar problem, accessible at the same level, is to count the number of group homomorphisms from a dihedral group of order $2m$ into…

Let Ng be the connected closed nonorientable surface of genus g >= 5 and Mod(Ng) denote the mapping class group of Ng. We prove that the outer automorphism group of Mod(Ng) is either trivial or Z if g is odd, and injects into the mapping…

Let $N_{g}$ denote a closed nonorientable surface of genus $g$. For $g \geq 2$ the mapping class group $\mathcal{M}(N_{g})$ is generated by Dehn twists and one crosscap slide ($Y$-homeomorphism) or by Dehn twists and a crosscap…

We give a topological interpretation of the core group invariant of a surface embedded in S^4. We show that the group is isomorphic to the free product of the fundamental group of the double branch cover of S^4 with the surface as a…

We study geometric presentations of braid groups for particles that are constrained to move on a graph, i.e. a network consisting of nodes and edges. Our proposed set of generators consists of exchanges of pairs of particles on junctions of…

Let $S$ be a closed oriented surface and $G$ a finite group of orientation preserving automorphisms of $S$ whose orbit space has genus at least $2$. There is a natural group homomorphism from the $G$-centralizer in $Diff^+(S)$ to the…

We give an infinite presentation for the mapping class group of a non-orientable surface. The generating set consists of all Dehn twists and all crosscap pushing maps along simple loops.

In this paper we compute the automorphism groups $\operatorname{Aut}(\mathbf{P}_n(\Sigma))$ and $\operatorname{Aut}(\mathbf{B}_n(\Sigma))$ of braid groups $\mathbf{P}_n(\Sigma)$ and $\mathbf{B}_n(\Sigma)$ on every orientable surface…

We show that any homologically non-trivial Dehn twist of a compact surface F with boundary is the lifting of a half-twist in the braid group B_n, with respect to a suitable branched covering p : F -> B^2. In particular, we allow the surface…

We study a wide range of homologically-defined representations of surface braid groups and of mapping class groups of surfaces, including the Lawrence-Bigelow representations of the classical braid groups. These representations naturally…

We classify surface Houghton groups, as well as their pure subgroups, up to isomorphism, commensurability, and quasi-isometry.

The space of monic squarefree complex polynomials has a stratification according to the multiplicities of the critical points. We introduce a method to study these strata by way of the infinite-area translation surface associated to the…