Related papers: The Nielsen-Thurston classification of mapping cla…
We study the TQFT mapping class group representations for surfaces with boundary associated with the $SU(2)$ gauge group, or equivalently the quantum group $U_q(\Sl(2))$. We show that at a prime root of unity, these representations are all…
The mapping class group ${\Gamma}_g^ 1$ of a closed orientable surface of genus $g \geq 1$ with one marked point can be identified, by the Nielsen action, with a subgroup of the group of orientation preserving homeomorphims of the circle.…
We consider a central extension of the mapping class group of a surface with a collection of framed colored points. The Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFTs associated to SU(2) and SO(3) induce linear representations of this group. We show that…
A proposal of the concept of $n$-regular obstructed categories is given. The corresponding regularity conditions for mappings, morphisms and related structures in categories are considered. An n-regular TQFT is introduced. It is shown the…
Thurston obtained a classification of individual surface homeomorphisms via the dynamics of the corresponding mapping class elements on Teichm\"uller space. In this paper we present certain extended versions of this, first, to random…
In this article we give examples which show that the TQFT representations of the mapping class groups derived from quantum SU(N) for N>2 are generically decomposable. One general decomposition of the representations is induced by the…
We classify minimal sets of (closed and oriented) hyperbolic surface homeomorphisms by studying the connected components of their complement. This extends the classification given by F. Kwakkel, T.J\"ager and A. Passeggi in the torus. The…
We show the Teichm\"uller space of a non-orientable surface with marked points (considered as a Klein surface) can be identified with a subspace of the Teichm\"uller space of its orientable double cover. Also, it is well known that the…
We show that for an odd prime r > 3 and an integer g > 1, in the projective representation given by the SO(3) Witten-Chern-Simons theory at an rth root of unity, the image of the mapping class group of a surface of genus g is dense.
In 1976, Thurston proved that taut foliations on closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds have Euler class of norm at most one, and conjectured that conversely, any integral second cohomology class with norm equal to one is the Euler class of a taut…
We describe a general method to compute the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-Thurston norm for every $\mathbb{Z}_2$-homology class in an orientable Seifert manifold with orientable orbit surface. Our main tools are pseudo-horizontal surfaces. We give a…
We investigate the family of marked Thurston maps that are defined everywhere on the topological sphere $S^2$, potentially excluding at most countable closed set of essential singularities. We show that when an unmarked Thurston map $f$ is…
We give a short proof of Masbaum and Reid's result that mapping class groups involve any finite group, appealing to free quotients of surface groups and a result of Gilman, following Dunfield-Thurston.
In his seminal 1976 paper Bill Thurston observed that a closed leaf S of a foliation has Euler characteristic equal, up to sign, to the Euler class of the foliation evaluated on [S], the homology class represented by S. The main result of…
The study of topological quantum field theories increasingly relies upon concepts from higher-dimensional algebra such as n-categories and n-vector spaces. We review progress towards a definition of n-category suited for this purpose, and…
We produce a sequence of finite dimensional representations of the fundamental group $\pi_1(S)$ of a closed surface where all simple closed curves act with finite order, but where each non--simple closed curve eventually acts with infinite…
Given a pair of filling curves $\alpha, \beta$ on a surface of genus $g$ with $n$ punctures, we explicitly compute the mapping classes realizing the minimal dilatation over all the pseudo-Anosov maps given by the Thurston construction on…
We investigate representations of mapping class groups of surfaces that arise from the untwisted Drinfeld double of a finite group G, focusing on surfaces without marked points or with one marked point. We obtain concrete descriptions of…
We construct integral bases for the SO(3)-TQFT-modules of surfaces in genus one and two at roots of unity of prime order and show that the corresponding mapping class group representations preserve a unimodular Hermitian form over a ring of…
The aim of this paper is to survey some aspects of mapping class groups with focus on their finite dimensional representations arising in topological quantum field theory.