Related papers: Big Handlebody Distance Implies Finite Mapping Cla…

It has been shown elsewhere that a strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting surface Q of a compact orientable 3-manifold M can, under reasonable side conditions, intersect a ball or a solid torus in M in only a few possible ways. Here we…

Assuming that every hyperbolic group is residually finite, we prove the congruence subgroup property for mapping class groups of hyperbolic surfaces of finite type. Under the same assumption, it follows that profinitely equivalent…

We construct families of manifolds that have pairs of genus $g$ Heegaard splittings that must be stabilized roughly $g$ times to become equivalent. We also show that when two unstabilized, boundary-unstabilized Heegaard splittings are…

In this paper, we study the action of finite subgroups of the mapping class group of a surface on the curve complex. We prove that if the diameter of the almost fixed point set of a finite subgroup H is big enough, then the centralizer of H…

We show that finite index subgroups of the handlebody group are rigid in their ambient mapping class group: any injective map of a finite index subgroup of the genus $g$ handlebody group into the genus $g$ mapping class group is conjugation…

We give an algorithmic proof of the theorem that a closed orientable irreducible and atoroidal 3-manifold has only finitely many Heegaard splittings in each genus, up to isotopy. The proof gives an algorithm to determine the Heegaard genus…

We show that central extensions of the mapping class group $M_g$ of the closed orientable surface of genus $g$ by $\Z$ are residually finite. Further we give rough estimates of the largest $N=N_g$ such that homomorphisms from $M_g$ to SU(N)…

Let $N_{g,n}$ denote the nonorientable surface of genus $g$ with $n$ boundary components and $M(N_{g,n})$ its mapping class group. We obtain an explicit finite presentation of $M(N_{g,n})$ for $n=0,1$ and all $g$ such that $g+n>3$.

We define "fat" train tracks and use them to give a combinatorial criterion for the Hempel distance of Heegaard splittings for closed orientable 3-manifolds. We apply this criterion to 3-manifolds obtained from surgery on knots in the three…

It is proved that the mapping class group of any closed surface with finitely many marked points is quasiisometric to a CAT(0) cube complex. We provide two distinct proofs, one tailored to mapping class groups, and one applying to a larger…

We prove that if a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold M contains infinitely many totally geodesic surfaces, then M is arithmetic.

Let $H$ be a strongly irreducible Heegaard surface in a closed oriented Riemannian $3$-manifold. We prove that $H$ is either isotopic to a minimal surface of index at most one or isotopic to the boundary of a tubular neighborhood about a…

A topology is defined on the mapping class group of a compact connected orientable surface. It is shown that a notion of "genericity" on subsets of the mapping class group arises from this definition. Many plausible results follow from this…

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 M and M' be simple 3-manifolds, each with connected boundary of genus at least two. Suppose that M and M' are glued via a homeomorphism between their boundaries. Then we show that, provided the gluing homeomorphism is `sufficiently…

In this paper, by putting a separating incompressible surface in a 3-manifold into Morse position relative to the height function associated to a strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting, we show that an incompressible subsurface of the…

Kevin Hartshorn showed that if a three-dimensional manifold $M$ admits a Heegaard surface $\Sigma$ with Hempel distance $d$ then every incompressible surface in $M$ has genus at least $\frac{d}{2}$. Scharlemann-Tomova generalized this,…

We analyze the number of ends of the mapping class group of a stable avenue surface. We prove that the mapping class group is one-ended whenever the stable avenue surface has at least one end of discrete type. Our method is to show that the…

Let $M=H_1\cup_S H_2$ be a Heegaard splitting of a closed orientable 3-manifold $M$ (or a bridge decomposition of a link exterior). Consider the subgroup $\mathrm{MCG}^0(H_j)$ of the mapping class group of $H_j$ consisting of mapping…

We show that given a partially flat angled ideal triangulation for a 3-manifold $M$ with boundary (as defined by Lackenby), there is an algorithm to produce a list of Heegaard splittings for $M$ such that below a given genus $g$, each…