Related papers: Presentations for the punctured mapping class grou…

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.

Let $G$ be a subgroup of ${\rm PGL}_2({\mathbb F}_q)$, where $q$ is any prime power, and let $Q \in {\mathbb F}_q[x]$ such that ${\mathbb F}_q(x)/{\mathbb F}_q(Q(x))$ is a Galois extension with group $G$. By explicitly computing the Artin…

In this paper we compute the mapping class group of simply-connected closed smooth manifolds $M$ with integral homology $H_{*}(M) \cong \mathbb Z \oplus \mathbb Z \oplus \mathbb Z$ provided that $\dim M \ne 4$.

We study mapping class group orbits of homotopy and isotopy classes of curves with self-intersections. We exhibit the asymptotics of the number of such orbits of curves with a bounded number of self-intersections, as the complexity of the…

Let $M$ be a compact surface and $P$ be either $\mathbb{R}$ or $S^1$. For a smooth map $f:M\to P$ and a closed subset $V\subset M$, denote by $\mathcal{S}(f,V)$ the group of diffeomorphisms $h$ of $M$ preserving $f$, i.e. satisfying the…

We give an infinite presentation for the mapping class group of a non-orientable surface. The generating set consists of all Dehn twists and all crosscap pushing maps along simple loops.

Let $\mathcal{M}$ be the Artin-Mumford curve over the finite prime field $\mathbb{F}_p$ with $p>2$. By a result of Valentini and Madan, $\mbox{Aut}_{\mathbb{F}_p}(\mathcal{M})\cong H$ with $H=(C_p\times C_p)\rtimes D_{p-1}$. We prove that…

Let G be a group of permutations of a denumerable set E. The profile of G is the function phi which counts, for each n, the number phi(n) of orbits of G acting on the n-subsets of E. Counting functions arising this way, and their associated…

The genus spectrum of a finite group $G$ is the set of all $g\geq 2$ such that $G$ acts faithfully and orientation-preserving on a closed compact orientable surface of genus $g$. This article is an overview of some results relating the…

We study quotients of mapping class groups (\Gamma_{g,1}) of oriented surfaces with one boundary component by terms of their Johnson filtrations, and we show that the homology of these quotients with suitable systems of twisted coefficients…

In this paper we compute the homotopy groups of the symplectomorphism groups of the 3-, 4- and 5-point blow-ups of the projective plane (considered as monotone symplectic Del Pezzo surfaces). Along the way, we need to compute the homotopy…

In our previous paper math/0502157 we classified a large class of finite-dimensional pointed Hopf algebras up to isomorphism. However the following problem was left open for Hopf algebras of of type $A,D$ or $E_6$, that is whose Cartan…

This thesis takes Brady's construction of $K(\pi,1)$s for the braid groups as a starting point. It is widely known that this construction can - with the right ingredients - be generalized to Artin groups of finite type. Results of Bessis as…

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…

In this article, we consider qualified notions of geometric finiteness in mapping class groups called parabolically geometrically finite (PGF) and reducibly geometrically finite (RGF). We examine several constructions of subgroups and…

We show that the pure mapping class group is uniformly perfect for a certain class of infinite type surfaces with noncompact boundary components. We then combine this result with recent work in the remaining cases to give a complete…

Let X be a 2-sphere with n punctures. We classify all conjugacy classes of Zariski-dense representations $$\rho: \pi_1(X)\to SL_2(\mathbb{C})$$ with finite orbit under the mapping class group of X, such that the local monodromy at one or…

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 compute the group of Morita self-equivalences (the Picard group) of a Poisson structure on an orientable surface, under the assumption that the degeneracies of the Poisson tensor are linear. The answer involves mapping class groups of…

For any tangle $T$ (up to isotopy) and integer $k\geq 1$ we construct a group $F(T)$ (up to isomorphism). It is the fundamental group of the configuration space of $k$ points in a horizontal plane avoiding the tangle, provided the tangle is…