Related papers: Lower bounds for faithful linear representations o…

We continue the study of low dimensional linear representations of mapping class groups of surfaces initiated by Franks--Handel and Korkmaz. We consider $(2g+1)$-dimensional complex linear representations of the pure mapping class groups of…

We classify representations of the mapping class group of a surface of genus $g$ (with at most one puncture or boundary component) up to dimension $3g-3$. Any such representation is the direct sum of a representation in dimension $2g$ or…

We prove that the cohomological dimension of the Torelli group for a closed connected orientable surface of genus g at least 2 is equal to 3g-5. This answers a question of Mess, who proved the lower bound and settled the case of g=2. We…

Any nontrivial homomorphism from the mapping class group of an orientable surface of genus $g\geq 3$ to $\GL(2g,\C)$ is conjugate to the standard symplectic representation. It is also shown that the mapping class group has no faithful…

The action of the mapping class group $\mathrm{Mod}_g$ of an oriented surface $\Sigma_g$ on the lower central series of $\pi_1(\Sigma_g)$ defines the descending filtration in $\mathrm{Mod}_g$ called the Johnson filtration. The first two…

We prove that various subgroups of the mapping class group $Mod(\Sigma)$ of a surface $\Sigma$ are at least exponentially distorted. Examples include the Torelli group (answering a question of Hamenstadt), the "point-pushing" and surface…

Recently, John Franks and Michael Handel proved that, for $g\geq 3$ and $n\leq 2g-4$, every homomorphism from the mapping class group of an orientable surface of genus $g$ to $\GL (n,\C)$ is trivial. We extend this result to $n\leq 2g-1$,…

The canonical dimension is an invariant attached to admissible representations of p-adic reductive groups, which has only received significant attention in the case of mod-p representations. In the case of complex representations, the…

It is shown, that the mapping class group of a surface of the genus g > 1 admits a faithful representation into the matrix group GL (6g-6, Z). The proof is based on a categorical correspondence between the Riemann surfaces and the so-called…

Suppose an orientation preserving action of a finite group $G$ on the closed surface $\Sigma_g$ of genus $g>1$ extends over the 3-torus $T^3$ for some embedding $\Sigma_g\subset T^3$. Then $|G|\le 12(g-1)$, and this upper bound $12(g-1)$…

The main goal of this note is to provide evidence that the first rational homology of the Johnson subgroup $K_{g,1}$ of the mapping class group of a genus g surface with one marked point is finite-dimensional. Building on work of…

We prove that in the moduli space of genus-g metric graphs the locus of graphs with gonality at most d has the classical dimension min{3g-3,2g+2d-5}. This follows from a careful parameter count to establish the upper bound and a…

Let $M =\mathbb{H}^3/\Gamma$ be a finite-volume, noncompact hyperbolic 3-manifold. We show that the number of quasi-Fuchsian surface subgroups of $\Gamma$ (up to conjugacy and commensurability) of genus at most $g$ is bounded both above and…

For a surface group $\pi_1(\Sigma_g)=\langle c_1,\dots , c_{2g}\mid c_1\cdots c_{2g}c_1^{-1}\cdots c_{2g}^{-1}\rangle$ with genus $g\geq 2$, we provide an explicit bound $n-1\leq \mathrm{CL}(2n)=\mathrm{CL}(2n+1)\leq n+8g-1$ for the…

Let $\Sigma_g$ be a compact, connected, orientable surface of genus $g \geq 2$. We ask for a parametrization of the discrete, faithful, totally loxodromic representations in the deformation space ${\rm Hom}(\pi_1(\Sigma_g), {\rm…

We consider orientation-preserving actions of finite groups $G$ on pairs $(S^3, \Sigma)$, where $\Sigma$ denotes a compact connected surface embedded in $S^3$. In a previous paper, we considered the case of closed, necessarily orientable…

For each integer $g\geq 1$ we use variational methods to construct in the unit $3$-ball $B$ a free boundary minimal surface $\Sigma_g$ of symmetry group $\mathbb{D}_{g+1}$. For $g$ large, $\Sigma_g$ has three boundary components and genus…

If M is a closed simple 3-manifold whose fundamental group contains a genus-g surface group for some g>1, and if the dimension of H_1(M;Z_2) is at least max(3g-1,6), we show that M contains a closed, incompressible surface of genus at most…

Let $\Sigma_g$ be a closed Riemann surface of genus $g$. Let $G$ be a finite subgroup of the automorphism group of $\Sigma_g$. It is well known that there exists a smooth $G$-equivariant embedding from $\Sigma_g$ to some Euclidean space…

Suppose that $f$ is a homomorphism from the mapping class group $\mathcal{M}(N_{g,n})$ of a nonorientable surface of genus $g$ with $n$ boundary components, to $\mathrm{GL}(m,\mathbb{C})$. We prove that if $g\ge 5$, $n\le 1$ and $m\le g-2$,…