Related papers: Geometric survey of subgroups of mapping class gro…
For any infinite-type surface $S$, a natural question is whether the homology of its mapping class group contains any non-trivial classes that are supported on (i) a compact subsurface or (ii) a finite-type subsurface. Our purpose here is…
We investigate the separability of several well known classes of subgroups of the mapping class group of a surface.
In this survey we discuss how geometric methods can be used to study topological properties of 3-manifolds such as their Heegaard genus or the rank of their fundamental group. On the other hand, we also discuss briefly some results relating…
We study the geometry of the Thurston metric on the Teichm\"uller space $\mathcal{T}(S)$ of hyperbolic structures on a surface $S$. Some of our results on the coarse geometry of this metric apply to arbitrary surfaces $S$ of finite type;…
We develop a theory of convex cocompact subgroups of the mapping class group MCG of a closed, oriented surface S of genus at least 2, in terms of the action on Teichmuller space. Given a subgroup G of MCG defining an extension L_G: 1-->…
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…
In this paper, we use new results together with established facts about Thurston's compactification of Teichm\"uller space to address the geometric P=W conjecture for $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$, which concerns projective compactifications…
Given a finite subgroup G of the mapping class group of a surface S, the Nielsen realization problem asks whether G can be realized as a finite group of homeomorphisms of S. In 1983, Kerckhoff showed that for S a finite-type surface, any…
We study geometry, topology and deformation spaces of noncompact complex hyperbolic manifolds (geometrically finite, with variable negative curvature), whose properties make them surprisingly different from real hyperbolic manifolds with…
This is a (very subjective) survey paper for nonspecialists covering group actions on Gromov hyperbolic spaces. The first section is about hyperbolic groups themselves, while the rest of the paper focuses on mapping class groups and…
Given a compact orientable surface $\Sigma$, let $\Cal S(\Sigma)$ be the set of isotopy classes of essential simple loops on $\Sigma$. We determine a complete set of relations for a function from $\Cal S(\Sigma)$ to $\bold Z$ to be a…
We study the isometry group of a globally hyperbolic spatially compact Lorentz surface. Such a group acts on the circle, and we show that when the isometry group acts non properly, the subgroups of $\mathrm{Diff}(\mathbb{S}^1)$ obtained are…
We survey the analogy between Kleinian groups and subgroups of the mapping class group of a surface.
This survey is based on a series of lectures that we gave at MSRI in Spring 2015 and on a series of papers, mostly written jointly with Joan Porti. Our goal here is to: 1. Describe a class of discrete subgroups $\Gamma<G$ of higher rank…
This paper has three parts. The first part is a general introduction to rigidity and to rigid actions of mapping class group actions on various spaces. In the second part, we describe in detail four rigidity results that concern actions of…
Various problems of geometry, topology and dynamical systems on surfaces as well as some questions concerning one-dimensional dynamical systems lead to the study of closed surfaces endowed with a flat metric with several cone-type…
We describe the action of the mapping class group $M(g,n)$ on the fundamental group of $T_{g,n}$, a compact orientable topological surface of positive genus $g$ with $n$ marked points. This is achieved by computing the image of the…
We investigate the mapping class groups of a class of non-Hausdorff topological spaces which includes finite spaces. We show that the mapping class group of a finite space is isomorphic to the homeomorphism group of its $T_0$ quotient. As a…
We obtain some classification result for the mapping class groups of compact orientable surfaces in terms of measure equivalence. In particular, the mapping class groups of different closed surfaces can not be measure equivalent. Moreover,…
We study the geometry of nonrelatively hyperbolic groups. Generalizing a result of Schwartz, any quasi-isometric image of a non-relatively hyperbolic space in a relatively hyperbolic space is contained in a bounded neighborhood of a single…