Related papers: Normal all pseudo-Anosov subgroups of mapping clas…
We prove that many normal subgroups of the extended mapping class group of a surface with punctures are geometric, that is, that their automorphism groups and abstract commensurator groups are isomorphic to the extended mapping class group.…
We construct the first examples of normal subgroups of mapping class groups that are isomorphic to non-free right-angled Artin groups. Our construction also gives normal, non-free right-angled Artin subgroups of other groups, such as braid…
Wajnryb proved that the mapping class group of a closed oriented surface is generated by two elements. We proved that the mapping class group is generated by two pseudo-Anosov elements. In particular, if the genus is greater than or equal…
We establish a criterion for certain mapping classes of a surface homeomorphisms to be pseudo-Anosov in terms of the geometry of hyperbolic 3-manifolds and Gromov-hyperbolic surface group extensions. Specifically, any element of the…
We provide a simple criterion for an element of the mapping class group of a closed surface to have normal closure equal to the whole mapping class group. We apply this to show that every nontrivial periodic mapping class that is not a…
We construct new monomorphisms between mapping class groups of surfaces. The first family of examples injects the mapping class group of a closed surface into that of a different closed surface. The second family of examples are defined on…
In this paper we construct a faithful representation of the mapping class group of the genus two surface into a group of matrices over the complex numbers. Our starting point is the Lawrence-Krammer representation of the braid group B_n,…
We construct sequences of pseudo-Anosov mapping classes whose dilatations behave asymptotically like the inverse of the Euler characteristic of the surface they are defined on. These sequences are used to show that if the genus, g, and…
Thurston's fibered face theory allows us to partition the set of pseudo-Anosov mapping classes on different compact oriented surfaces into subclasses with related dynamical behavior. This is done via a correspondence between the rational…
Twin groups are planar analogues of Artin braid groups and play a crucial role in the Alexander-Markov correspondence for the isotopy classes of immersed circles on the 2-sphere without triple and higher intersections. These groups admit…
We show that finitely generated, purely pseudo-Anosov subgroups of the fundamental groups of surface bundles over tori are convex cocompact as subgroups of the mapping class group via the Birman exact sequence. This generalizes the fact…
We discuss a number of open problems about mapping class groups of surfaces. In particular, we discuss problems related to linearity, congruence subgroups, cohomology, pseudo-Anosov stretch factors, Torelli subgroups, and normal subgroups.
We show that there is a type-preserving homomorphism from the fundamental group of the figure-eight knot complement to the mapping class group of the thrice-punctured torus. As a corollary, we obtain infinitely many commensurability classes…
We prove that if a normal subgroup of the extended mapping class group of a closed surface has an element of sufficiently small support then its automorphism group and abstract commensurator group are both isomorphic to the extended mapping…
Let Gamma_k be the lower central series of a surface group Gamma of a compact surface S with one boundary component. A simple question to ponder is whether a mapping class of S can be determined to be pseudo-Anosov given only the data of…
In this article, we study the normal generation of the mapping class group. We first show that a mapping class is a normal generator if its restriction on the invariant subsurface normally generates the (pure) mapping class group of the…
It is a classical result of Powell that pure mapping class groups of connected, orientable surfaces of finite type and genus at least three are perfect. In stark contrast, we construct nontrivial homomorphisms from infinite-genus mapping…
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…
We introduce a construction of pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms on n-times punctured spheres and surfaces with higher genus using only sufficiently many positive half-twists. These constructions can produce explicit examples of pseudo-Anosov…
Let $M =\mathbb{H}^3/\Gamma$ be a finite-volume, noncompact hyperbolic 3-manifold. We show that the number of quasi-Fuchsian surface subgroups of $\Gamma$ (up to conjugacy and commensurability) of genus at most $g$ is bounded both above and…