Related papers: Geometry of the mapping class groups I: Boundary a…

Let $X$ be a Hadamard manifold, and $\Gamma$ a non-elementary discrete group of isometries of $X$ which contains a rank one isometry. We relate the ergodic theory of the geodesic flow of the quotient orbifold $M=X/\Gamma$ to the behavior of…

Let $S$ be a surface of finite type which is not a sphere with at most four punctures, a torus with at most two punctures, or a closed surface of genus two. Let $\mathcal{MF}$ be the space of equivalence classes of measured foliations of…

For an infinite type surface $\Sigma$, we consider the space of (marked) convex hyperbolic structures on $\Sigma$, denoted $H(\Sigma)$, with the Fenchel-Nielsen topology. The (big) mapping class group acts faithfully on this space allowing…

We show that a totally geodesic submanifold of a symmetric space satisfying certain conditions admits an extension to a minimal submanifold of dimension one higher, and we apply this result to construct new examples of complete embedded…

The action of the mapping class group of a surface on the collection of homotopy classes of disjointly embedded curves or arcs in the surface is discussed here as a tool for understanding Riemann's moduli space and its topological and…

We show that every topological surface lamination of a 3-manifold M is isotopic to one with smoothly immersed leaves. This carries out a project proposed by Gabai in [Problems in foliations and laminations, AMS/IP Stud. Adv. Math. 2.2…

We construct explicit examples of geodesics in the mapping class group and show that the shadow of a geodesic in mapping class group to the curve graph does not have to be a quasi-geodesic. We also show that the quasi-axis of a…

We prove the congruence subgroup property for the centralizer of a finite subgroup $G$ in the mapping class group of a hyperbolic oriented and connected surface of finite topological type $S$ such that the genus of the quotient surface…

We address the question of determining which mapping class groups of infinite-type surfaces admit nonelementary continuous actions on hyperbolic spaces. More precisely, let $\Sigma$ be a connected, orientable surface of infinite type with…

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 $g+n>3$.

The 'contracting boundary' of a proper geodesic metric space consists of equivalence classes of geodesic rays that behave like rays in a hyperbolic space. We introduce a geometrically relevant, quasi-isometry invariant topology on the…

We construct the Fukaya category of a surface with genus greater than one and compute its Grothendieck group. We consider here a topological variant, in which we disregard the area form and use instead an admissibility condition borrowed…

We describe a cocompact model for the classifying space for proper actions of the mapping class group of a surface with punctures and boundary components. Our construction relies on a known model for the case of a closed surface and uses an…

We prove a well known conjecture of Nikolai Ivanov which states that if $X$ is a surface of genus $\geq 3$ (with any number of punctures and boundary components), $\rm{Mod}(X)$ is the mapping class group of $X$, and $K < \rm{Mod}(X)$ is a…

We generalize the notion of tight geodesics in the curve complex to tight trees. We then use tight trees to construct model geometries for certain surface bundles over graphs. This extends some aspects of the combinatorial model for doubly…

We determine the first homology group of the mapping class group M(N) of a nonorientable surface N with coefficients in H_1(N;Z).

This paper uses the renowned Kechris-Pestov-Todor\v{c}evi\'{c} machinery to show that (big) mapping class groups are not extremely amenable unless the underlying surface is a sphere or a once-punctured sphere, or equivalently when the…

A normal subgroup of the (extended) mapping class group of a surface is said to be geometric if its automorphism group is the mapping class group. We prove that in the case of the Cantor tree surface, every normal subgroup is geometric. We…

We provide new constraints for algebro-geometric subgroups of mapping class groups, namely images of fundamental groups of curves under complex algebraic maps to the moduli space of smooth curves. Specifically, we prove that the restriction…

Deformation spaces Hom($\pi$,G)/G of representations of the fundamental group $\pi$ of a surface $\Sigma$ in a Lie group $G$ admit natural actions of the mapping class group $Mod_\Sigma$, preserving a Poisson structure. When $G$ is compact,…