Related papers: Probing mapping class groups using arcs

Moduli spaces of algebraic curves and closely related to them Hurwitz spaces, that is, spaces of meromorphic functions on the curves, arise naturally in numerous problems of algebraic geometry and mathematical physics, especially in…

We study the action of the mapping class group on the subspace of de Rham classes in the degree-two bounded cohomology of a hyperbolic surface. In particular, we show that the only fixed nontrivial finite-dimensional subspace is the one…

This paper describes connected components of the strata of holomorphic abelian differentials on marked Riemann surfaces with prescribed degrees of zeros. Unlike the case for unmarked Riemann surfaces, we find there can be many connected…

Let $S$ be a hyperbolic oriented Riemann surface of finite type. The main purpose of this paper is to show that non-trivial geometric intersection between closed curves on $S$ is detected by some symplectic submodules they naturally…

This article accompanies my lecture at the 2015 AMS summer institute in algebraic geometry in Salt Lake City. I survey the recent advances in the study of tautological classes on the moduli spaces of curves. After discussing the…

We first describe the action of the fundamental group of a closed surface of variable negative curvature on the oriented geodesics in its universal covering in terms of a naturally-defined flat connection whose holonomy lies in the group of…

This paper concerns the lattice counting problem for the mapping class group of a surface $S$ acting on Teichm\"uller space with the Teichm\"uller metric. In that problem the goal is to count the number of mapping classes that send a given…

The topology of complex classical paths is investigated to discuss quantum tunnelling splittings in one-dimensional systems. Here the Hamiltonian is assumed to be given as polynomial functions, so the fundamental group for the Riemann…

We consider the homotopy type of maps between symplectic surface whose graphs form symplectic submanifolds of the product. We give a purely topological model for this space in terms of maps with constrained numbers of pre-images. We use…

We discuss selected topics on the topology of moduli spaces of curves and maps, emphasizing their relation with Gromov--Witten theory and integrable systems.

The moduli space of stable relative maps to the projective line combines features of stable maps and admissible covers. We prove all standard Gromov-Witten classes on these moduli spaces of stable relative maps have tautological…

We extend the theory of tautological classes on moduli spaces of stable curves to the more general setting of moduli spaces of admissible Galois covers of curves, introducing the so-called H-tautological ring. The main new feature is the…

In this work, we study topological properties of surface bundles, with an emphasis on surface bundles with a spin structure. We develop a criterion to decide whether a given manifold bundle has a spin structure and specialize it to surface…

This work deals with the topological classification of germs of singular foliations on $(\mathbb C^{2},0)$. Working in a suitable class of foliations we fix the topological invariants given by the separatrix set, the Camacho-Sad indices and…

We introduce the moduli space of marked, complete, Nielsen-convex hyperbolic structures on a surface of negative, but not necessarily finite, Euler characteristic. The emphasis is on infinite type surfaces, the aim being to study mapping…

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…

Actions of finite groups on stable curves are studied. They appear naturally at the boundary of a moduli space of smooth curves with group actions. Those actions which can equivariantly smoothed are characterised. A description of…

In this paper we study the modular classes of Dirac manifolds and of Dirac maps, and we discuss their basic properties. We apply these results to explain the relationship between the modular classes of the various structures involved in the…

This paper presents a number of problems about mapping class groups and moduli space. The paper will appear in the book "Problems on Mapping Class Groups and Related Topics", ed. by B. Farb, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. series, Amer. Math. Soc.

We use algebraic topology to investigate local curvature properties of the moduli spaces of gauged vortices on a closed Riemann surface. After computing the homotopy type of the universal cover of the moduli spaces (which are symmetric…