Related papers: On the linearity of certain mapping class groups

We give completely combinatorial proofs of the main results of [3] using polygons. Namely, we prove that the mapping class group of a surface with boundary acts faithfully on a finitely-generated linear category. Along the way we prove some…

The goal of these notes is to prove that the mapping class groups of a closed orientable surface of genus two, with punctures, are not K\"ahler

We show that the {\it full} mapping class group of any orientable closed surface with punctures admits a cocompact classifying space for proper actions of dimension equal to its virtual cohomological dimension. This was proved for closed…

Recent results on the linearity of braid groups are extended in two ways. We generalize the Lawrence Krammer representation as well as Krammer's faithfulness proof for this linear representation to Artin groups of finite type.

In a previous work [11], the author considered a representation of the braid group \rho: B_n\to GL_m(\Bbb Z[q^{\pm 1},t^{\pm 1}]) (m=n(n-1)/2), and proved it to be faithful for n=4. Bigelow [3] then proved the same representation to be…

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.

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…

A linear Gr-category is a category of finite-dimensional vector spaces graded by a finite group together with natural tensor product. We classify the braided monoidal structures of a class of linear Gr-categories via explicit computations…

We give a survey of the theory of surface braid groups and the lower algebraic K-theory of their group rings. We recall several definitions and describe various properties of surface braid groups, such as the existence of torsion,…

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 show that every subgroup of the mapping class group MCG(S) of a compact surface S is either virtually abelian or it has infinite dimensional second bounded cohomology. As an application, we give another proof of the…

Let X be a 2-sphere with n punctures. We classify all conjugacy classes of Zariski-dense representations $$\rho: \pi_1(X)\to SL_2(\mathbb{C})$$ with finite orbit under the mapping class group of X, such that the local monodromy at one or…

In this note we prove that the mapping class group of a compact topological manifold $M$ with boundary is of finite type, under assumptions on its dimension and connectivity.

We consider finite-sheeted, regular, possibly branched covering spaces of compact surfaces with boundary and the associated liftable and symmetric mapping class groups. In particular, we classify when either of these subgroups coincides…

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…

The spectrum of a group is the set of orders of its elements. Finite groups with the same spectra as the direct squares of the finite simple groups with abelian Sylow 2-subgroups are considered. It is proved that the direct square…

The main result of this article is that pure orbifold braid groups fit into an exact sequence $1\rightarrow…

We study the problem of determining the isomorphism classes of the virtually cyclic subgroups of the n-string braid groups B_n(S^2) of the 2-sphere S^2. If n is odd, or if n is even and sufficiently large, we obtain the complete…

We construct the first known examples of nontrivial, normal, all pseudo-Anosov subgroups of mapping class groups of surfaces. Specifically, we construct such subgroups for the closed genus two surface and for the sphere with five or more…

The genus spectrum of a finite group $G$ is the set of all $g\geq 2$ such that $G$ acts faithfully and orientation-preserving on a closed compact orientable surface of genus $g$. This article is an overview of some results relating the…