Related papers: Generating Extended Mapping Class Groups with Two …

We study invertible generating pairs of fundamental groups of graph manifolds, that is, pairs of elements (g,h) for which the map g --> g^{-1}, h --> h^{-1} extends to an automorphism. We show in particular that a graph manifold is of…

We show that the set of harmonic maps from the 2-dimensional stratified spheres with uniformly bounded energies contains only finitely many homotopy classes. We apply this result to construct infinitely many harmonic map flows and mean…

We show that the mapping class group acts properly on the space of maximal representations of the fundamental group of a closed Riemann surface into G when G = Sp(2n,R), SU(n,n), SO*(2n) or Spin(2,n).

We are concerned with mapping class groups of surfaces with nonempty boundary. We present a very natural method, due to Thurston, of finding many different left orderings of such groups. The construction involves equipping the surface with…

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…

We describe all groups that can be generated by two twists along spherical sequences in an enhanced triangulated category. It will be shown that with one exception such a group is isomorphic to an abelian group generated by not more than…

By considering appropriate finite covering spaces of closed non-orientable surfaces, we construct linear representations of their mapping class group which have finite index image in certain big arithmetic groups.

We establish a criterion for certain mapping classes of a surface homeomorphisms to be pseudo-Anosov in terms of the geometry of hyperbolic 3-manifolds and Gromov-hyperbolic surface group extensions. Specifically, any element of the…

Mann and Rafi's seminal work initiated the study of the coarse geometry of big mapping class groups. Specifically, they construct coarsely bounded (CB) generating sets for mapping class groups of a large class of infinite-type surfaces. In…

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…

Let $S$ be a compact orientable surface, and $\Mod(S)$ its mapping class group. Then there exists a constant $M(S)$, which depends on $S$, with the following property. Suppose $a,b \in \Mod(S)$ are independent (i.e., $[a^n,b^m]\not=1$ for…

The strong isomorphism classes of extensions of finite groups are parametrized by orbits of a prescribed action on the second cohomology group. We study these orbits in the case of extensions of a finite abelian $p$-group by a cyclic factor…

An automorphism $f$ of a closed orientable surface $\Sigma$ is said to be extendable over the 3-sphere $S^3$ if $f$ extends to an automorphism of the pair $(S^3, \Sigma)$ with respect to some embedding $\Sigma \hookrightarrow S^3$. We prove…

We prove that the invariably generating graph of a finite group can have an arbitrarily large number of connected components with at least two vertices.

We describe a procedure to construct infinite sets of pairwise smoothly inequivalent 2-spheres in simply connected 4-manifolds, which are topologically isotopic and whose complement has a prescribed fundamental group that satisfies some…

There exist right angled Artin groups $A$ such that the isomorphism problem for finitely presented subgroups of $A$ is unsolvable, and for certain finitely presented subgroups the conjugacy and membership problems are unsolvable. It follows…

Let $S_g$ be the closed oriented surface of genus $g \geq 0$, and let $\mathrm{Mod}(S_g)$ be the mapping class group of $S_g$. For $g\geq 2$, we develop an algorithm to obtain a finite generating set for the liftable mapping class group…

The kth finite subset space of a topological space X is the space exp_k X of non-empty finite subsets of X of size at most k, topologised as a quotient of X^k. The construction is a homotopy functor and may be regarded as a union of…

Let T(N) be the subgroup of the mapping class group of a nonorientable surface N (possibly with punctures and/or boundary components) generated by twists about two-sided circles. We obtain a simple generating set for T(N). As an application…

We present two distinct families of imaginary biquadratic fields, each of which contains infinitely many members, with each member having large class groups. Construction of the first family involves elliptic curves and their quadratic…