Related papers: Braids, mapping class groups, and categorical delo…

A near-group category is an additively semisimple category with a product such that all but one of the simple objects is invertible. We classify braided structures on near-group categories, and give explicit numerical formulas for their…

We define a simplicial category called the category of derived manifolds. It contains the category of smooth manifolds as a full discrete subcategory, and it is closed under taking arbitrary intersections in a manifold. A derived manifold…

By Torelli topology the author understands aspects of the topology of surfaces (potentially) relevant to the study of Torelli groups. The present paper is devoted to a new approach to the results of W. Vautaw about Dehn multi-twists in…

We introduce a refined version of group cohomology and relate it to the space of polynomials on the group in question. We show that the polynomial cohomology with trivial coefficients admits a description in terms of ordinary cohomology…

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…

This is an introduction for algebraists to the theory of algebras and Hopf algebras in braided categories. Such objects generalise super-algebras and super-Hopf algebras, aswell as colour-Lie algebras. Basic facts about braided categories C…

In this paper we first show that many braid groups of low genus surfaces have their centers as direct factors. We then give a description of centralizers and normalizers of prime order elements in pure mapping class groups of surfaces with…

The Hopf theorem states that homotopy classes of continuous maps from a closed connected oriented smooth $n$-manifold $M$ to the $n$-sphere are classified by their degree. Such a map is equivalent to a section of the trivial $n$-sphere…

We prove that the boundary Dehn twist on $K3\#K3\setminus B^4$ is nontrivial in the smooth mapping class group, providing another example of an exotic diffeomorphism on a simply-connected spin four-manifold. We do so by finding an algebraic…

We prove that the homology of the mapping class groups of non-orientable surfaces stabilizes with the genus of the surface. Combining our result with recent work of Madsen and Weiss, we obtain that the classifying space of the stable…

Motivated by the Lawrence-Krammer-Bigelow representations of the classical braid groups, we study the homology of unordered configurations in an orientable genus-$g$ surface with one boundary component, over non-commutative local systems…

This work contributes to clarifying several relationships between certain higher categorical structures and the homotopy type of their classifying spaces. Bicategories (in particular monoidal categories) have well understood simple…

We prove that braid group representations associated to braided fusion categories and mapping class group representations associated to modular fusion categories are always semisimple. The proof relies on the theory of extensions in…

In this paper we show that for m>n the set of cobordism classes of maps from m-sphere to n-sphere is trivial. The determination of the cobordism homotopy groups of spheres admits applications to the covers for spheres.

We give a short, mostly elementary and self-contained proof of the classical result that the groups of diffeomorphisms, homeomorphisms, and homotopy equivalences of a surface have the same group of connected components.

This article is about Artin's braid group and its role in knot theory. We set ourselves two goals: (i) to provide enough of the essential background so that our review would be accessible to graduate students, and (ii) to focus on those…

This paper has 3 principal goals: (1) to survey what is know about mapping class and Torelli groups of simply connected compact Kaehler manifolds, (2) supplement these results, and (3) present a list of questions and open problems to…

We study deformations of complex projective varieties that are homotopically or homologically trivial. We formulate several conjectures and give some examples and partial answers.

We prove a homological stability theorem for the subgroup of the mapping class group acting as the identity on some fixed portion of the first homology group of the surface. We also prove a similar theorem for the subgroup of the mapping…

Let a and b be two simple closed curves on an orientable surface S such that their geometric intersection number is greater than 1. It is known that the group generated by corresponding Dehn twists t_a and t_b is isomorphic to the free…