Related papers: Combinatorial rigidity in curve complexes and mapp…
Combinatorial aspects of the Torelli-Johnson-Morita theory of surface automorphisms are extended to certain subgroups of the mapping class groups. These subgroups are defined relative to a specified homomorphism from the fundamental group…
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…
This article investigates a few questions about orbits of local automorphisms in manifolds endowed with rigid geometric structures. We give sufficient conditions for local homogeneity in a broad class of such structures, namely Cartan…
We show that continuous epimorphisms between a class of subgroups of mapping class groups of orientable infinite-genus 2-manifolds with no planar ends are always induced by homeomorphisms. This class of subgroups includes the pure mapping…
It is known that the fundamental group homomorphism $\pi_1(T^2) \to \pi_1(S^3\setminus K)$ induced by the inclusion of the boundary torus into the complement of a knot $K$ in $S^3$ is a complete knot invariant. Many classical invariants of…
We define cusp-decomposable manifolds and prove smooth rigidity within this class of manifolds. These manifolds generally do not admit a nonpositively curved metric but can be decomposed into pieces that are diffeomorphic to finite volume,…
We prove the existence of (non compact) complex surfaces with a smooth rational curve embedded such that there does not exist any formal singular foliation along the curve. In particular, at arbitray small neighborhood of the curve, any…
Building on work of Farb and the second author, we prove that the group of automorphisms of the fine curve graph for a surface is isomorphic to the group of homeomorphisms of the surface. This theorem is analogous to the seminal result of…
When can a map between manifolds be deformed away from itself? We describe a (normal bordism) obstruction which is often computable and in general much stronger than the classical primary obstruction in cohomology. In particular, it answers…
Let B_n be the braid group on n > 3 strands. We prove that B_n modulo its center is co-Hopfian. We then show that any injective endomorphism of B_n is geometric in the sense that it is induced by a homeomorphism of a punctured disk. We…
Given any connected compact orientable surface, a pair of mapping classes are said to be procongruently conjugate if they induce a conjugate pair of outer automophisms on the profinite completion of the fundamental group of the surface. For…
Suppose that $X$ and $Y$ are surfaces of finite topological type, where $X$ has genus $g\geq 6$ and $Y$ has genus at most $2g-1$; in addition, suppose that $Y$ is not closed if it has genus $2g-1$. Our main result asserts that every…
In the study of holomorphic maps, the term "rigidity" refers to certain types of results that give us very specific information about a general class of holomorphic maps owing to the geometry of their domains or target spaces. Under this…
A rigid set in a curve complex of a surface is a subcomplex such that every locally injective simplicial map from the set into the curve complex is induced by a homeomorphism of the surface. In this paper, we find finite rigid sets in the…
This paper studies the obstructions to deforming a map from a complex variety to another variety which is an immersion of codimension one. We extend the classical notion of semiregularity of subvarieties to maps between varieties, and show…
We investigate the local deformation space of 3-dimensional cone-manifold structures of constant curvature $\kappa \in \{-1,0,1\}$ and cone-angles $\leq \pi$. Under this assumption on the cone-angles the singular locus will be a trivalent…
We introduce the notion of coupled embeddability, defined for maps on products of topological spaces. We use known results for nonsingular biskew and bilinear maps to generate simple examples and nonexamples of coupled embeddings. We study…
We give two proofs that appropriately defined congruence subgroups of the mapping class group of a surface with punctures/boundary have enormous amounts of rational cohomology in their virtual cohomological dimension. In particular we give…
We prove that 2-dimensional simplicial complexes whose first homology group is trivial have topological embeddings in 3-space if and only if there are embeddings of their link graphs in the plane that are compatible at the edges and they…
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…