Related papers: Core and intersection number for group actions on …

There is a forgetful map from the mapping class group of a punctured surface to that of the surface with one fewer puncture. We prove that finitely generated purely pseudo-Anosov subgroups of the kernel of this map are convex cocompact in…

We prove algebraic analogues of the facts that a curve on a surface with self-intersection number zero is homotopic to a cover of a simple curve, and that two simple curves on a surface with intersection number zero can be isotoped to be…

We show that there is a collection of subgroups of the mapping class group of a surface such that the associated coset intersection complex is quasi-isometric and homotopy equivalent to the curve complex. Moreover, we prove that these two…

For two oriented simple closed curves on a compact orientable surface with a connected boundary we introduce a simple computation of a value in the first homology group of the surface, which detects in some cases that the geometric…

We study mapping class group orbits of homotopy and isotopy classes of curves with self-intersections. We exhibit the asymptotics of the number of such orbits of curves with a bounded number of self-intersections, as the complexity of the…

We consider systems of simple closed curves on surfaces and their total number of intersection points, their so-called crossing number. For a fixed number of curves, we aim to minimise the crossing number. We determine the minimal crossing…

In this paper we consider an elementary, and largely unexplored, combinatorial problem in low-dimensional topology. Consider a real 2-dimensional compact surface $S$, and fix a number of points $F$ on its boundary. We ask: how many…

Taking a Feynman categorical perspective, several key aspects of the geometry of surfaces are deduced from combinatorial constructions with graphs. This provides a direct route from combinatorics of graphs to string topology operations via…

In this chapter, we outline some of the many combinatorial tools developed over the past three decades for studying a pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphism of a surface by analyzing the geometry of its mapping torus. We begin with an overview of the…

We introduce a new perspective on a procedure for generating pseudo-Anosov homemorphisms from postcritically finite interval maps. The central idea is the realization of a tree structure on one such family of pseudo-Anosovs: individual…

Oriented closed curves on an orientable surface with boundary are described up to continuous deformation by reduced cyclic words in the generators of the fundamental group and their inverses. By self-intersection number one means the…

We introduce an operation that measures the self intersections of paths on a surface. As applications, we give a criterion of the realizability of a generalized Dehn twist, and derive a geometric constraint on the image of the Johnson…

Given an ordered sequence of $N$-choose-2 integers, we give necessary and sufficient conditions to have an ordered collection of $N$ simple closed curves on a torus such that the algebraic pairwise intersections of those curves are the…

In an orientable surface with boundary, free homotopy classes of curves on surfaces are in one to one correspondence with cyclic reduced words in a set of standard generators of the fundamental group. The combinatorial length of a class is…

We give a topological interpretation of the core group invariant of a surface embedded in S^4. We show that the group is isomorphic to the free product of the fundamental group of the double branch cover of S^4 with the surface as a…

Two free homotopy classes of closed curves in an orientable surface with negative Euler characteristic are said to be length equivalent if for any hyperbolic structure on the surface, the length of the geodesic in one class is equal to the…

We show that if a 1-ended group $G$ acts geometrically on a CAT(0) space $X$ and $\bd X$ is separated by $m$ points then either $G$ is virtually a surface group or $G$ splits over a 2-ended group. In the course of the proof we study nesting…

For the free group $F_{N}$ of finite rank $N \geq 2$ we construct a canonical Bonahon-type continuous and $Out(F_N)$-invariant \emph{geometric intersection form} \[ <, >: \bar{cv}(F_N)\times Curr(F_N)\to \mathbb R_{\ge 0}. \] Here…

We show that many countable groups acting on trees, including free products of infinite countable groups and surface groups, are isomorphic to dense subgroups of isometry groups of bounded Urysohn spaces. This extends previous results of…

We study the {\it arc and curve} complex $AC(S)$ of an oriented connected surface $S$ of finite type with punctures. We show that if the surface is not a sphere with one, two or three punctures nor a torus with one puncture, then the…