Related papers: The mapping class group of a genus two surface is …

The mapping class group of a surface with one boundary component admits numerous interesting representations including as a group of automorphisms of a free group and as a group of symplectic transformations. Insofar as the mapping class…

We construct representations of the braid groups B_n on n strands on free Z[q,q^-1,s,s^-1]-modules W_{n,l} using generic Verma modules for an integral version of quantum sl_2. We prove that the W_{n,2} are isomorphic to the faithful…

The Lawrence representation $L_{n,m}$ is a family of homological representation of the braid group $B_n$, which specializes to the reduced Burau and the Lawrence-Krammer representation when $m$ is 1 and 2. In this article we show that the…

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 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…

Let $M$ be a compact surface without boundary, and $n\geq 2$. We analyse the quotient group $B_n(M)/\Gamma_2(P_n(M))$ of the surface braid group $B_{n}(M)$ by the commutator subgroup $\Gamma_2(P_n(M))$ of the pure braid group $P_{n}(M)$. If…

We construct two families of representations of the braid group $B_n$ by considering conjugation actions on congruence subgroups of $GL_{n-1}(Z[t^{\pm 1},q^{\pm 1}])$. We show that many of these representations are faithful modulo the…

In this paper we survey some work on representations of $B_n$ given by the induced action on a homology module of some space. One of these, called the Lawrence-Krammer representation, recently came to prominence when it was shown to be…

We give an exposition of the work of Bigelow and Krammer who proved that the Artin braid groups are linear.

Braid groups and mapping class groups have many features in common. Similarly to the notion of inverse braid monoid inverse mapping class monoid is defined. It concerns surfaces with punctures, but among given $n$ punctures several can be…

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…

Let V be the 7-dimensional irreducible representation of the quantum group U_q(g_2). For each n, there is a map from the braid group B_n to the endomorphism algebra of the n-th tensor power of V, given by R-matrices. We can extend this…

We give a finite presentation of the mapping class group of an oriented (possibly bounded) surface of genus greater or equal than 1, considering Dehn twists on a very simple set of curves.

We classify homomorphisms from the braid group on $n$ strands to the pure mapping class group of a nonoriantable surface of genus $g$. For $n\ge 14$ and $g\le 2\lfloor{n/2}\rfloor+1$ every such homomorphism is either cyclic, or it maps…

It is known that the Lawrence-Krammer representation of the Artin group of type $A_{n-1}$ based on the two parameters $t$ and $q$ that was used by Krammer and independently by Bigelow to show the linearity of the braid group on $n$ strands…

We prove that if g and n are integers at least two, then the abstract commensurator of the braid group with n strands on a closed orientable surface of genus g is naturally isomorphic to the extended mapping class group of a compact…

In this paper, we make use of the relations between the braid and mapping class groups of a compact, connected, non-orientable surface N without boundary and those of its orientable double covering S to study embeddings of these groups and…

We define orbifold mapping class groups (with marked points) and study them using their action on certain orbifold analogs of arcs and simple closed curves. Moreover, we establish a Birman exact sequence for suitable subgroups of orbifold…

We investigate representations of mapping class groups of surfaces that arise from the untwisted Drinfeld double of a finite group G, focusing on surfaces without marked points or with one marked point. We obtain concrete descriptions of…

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…