Related papers: Geometry of the mapping class groups I: Boundary a…
We give an alternate proof of the left-orderability of the mapping class group of a connected oriented infinite-type surface with a non-empty boundary. Our main strategy involves the inductive construction of a countable stable Alexander…
We prove a semisimplicity result for the boundary, in the corresponding Deligne-Mumford compactification, of a totally geodesic subvariety of a moduli space of Riemann surfaces. At the level of Teichm\"uller space, this semisimplicity…
The construction of manifold structures and fundamental classes on the (compactified) moduli spaces appearing in Gromov-Witten theory is a long-standing problem. Up until recently, most successful approaches involved the imposition of…
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 are concerned with mapping class groups of surfaces with nonempty boundary. We present a very natural method, due to Thurston, of finding many different left orderings of such groups. The construction involves equipping the surface with…
Let $S$ be a nonorientable surface of genus $g\ge 5$ with $n\ge 0$ punctures, and $\Mcg(S)$ its mapping class group. We define the complexity of $S$ to be the maximum rank of a free abelian subgroup of $\Mcg(S)$. Suppose that $S_1$ and…
A conformal structure on a manifold $M^n$ induces natural second order conformally invariant operators, called M\"obius and Laplace structures, acting on specific weight bundles of $M$, provided that $n\ge 3$. By extending the notions of…
We study the action of the mapping class group on the real homology of finite covers of a topological surface. We use the homological representation of the mapping class to construct a faithful infinite-dimensional representation of the…
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 introduce and study a notion of relative 1-homotopy type for Sobolev maps from a surface to a metric space spanning a given collection of Jordan curves. We use this to establish the existence and local H\"older regularity of area…
The problem of enumeration of conjugacy classes of finite abelian subgroups of the mapping class group $\mathcal{M}_{\sigma}$ of a compact closed surface $X$ of genus $\sigma$ is considered. A complete method of enumeration is achieved for…
The equivariant Gromov--Hausdorff convergence of metric spaces is studied. Where all isometry groups under consideration are compact Lie, it is shown that an upper bound on the dimension of the group guarantees that the convergence is by…
Let $\Sigma$ be a complete finite-area orientable hyperbolic surface with one cusp, and let $\mathcal{R}$ be the space of complete geodesic rays in $\Sigma$ emanating from the puncture. Then there is a natural action of the mapping class…
We construct a boundary for the mapping class group Mod(S) of a surface S of finite type. The action of Mod(S) on this boundary is minimal, strongly proximal and topologically free. The boundary is the boundary of an EZ-structure for…
For any positive integer $n$, we exhibit a cofinite subgroup $\Gamma_n$ of the mapping class group of a surface of genus at most two such that $\Gamma_n$ admits an epimorphism onto a free group of rank $n$. We conclude that…
The mapping class group $\mathrm{Mod}_{g, 1}$ of a surface with one marked point can be identified with an index two subgroup of $\mathrm{Aut}(\pi_1 \Sigma_g)$. For a surface of genus $g \geq 2$, we show that any action of $\mathrm{Mod}_{g,…
We show that the {\it full} mapping class group of any orientable closed surface with punctures admits a cocompact classifying space for proper actions of dimension equal to its virtual cohomological dimension. This was proved for closed…
In this paper we prove stability results for the homology of the mapping class group of a surface. We get a stability range that is near optimal, and extend the result to twisted coefficients.
This paper contributes to the classification of positive scalar curvature metrics up to bordism and up to concordance. Let $M$ be a closed spin manifold of dimension $\ge 5$ which admits a metric with positive scalar curvature. We give…
Given two automorphisms of a group $G$, one is interested in knowing whether they are conjugate in the automorphism group of $G$, or in the abstract commensurator of $G$, and how these two properties may differ. When $G$ is the fundamental…