Related papers: An elementary approach to the mapping class group …

Finite presentations for the mapping class group M(F) are known for arbitrary orientable compact surface F. If F is non-orientable, then such presentations are known only when F has genus at most 3 and few boundary components. In this paper…

We prove a closed formula expressing any multiplicative characteristic class evaluated on the tangent bundle of the Hilbert schemes of points on a non-compact simply-connected surface. As a corollary, we deduce a closed formula for the…

Let $X$ be a compact connected Riemann surface of genus at least two, and let ${G}$ be a connected semisimple affine algebraic group defined over $\mathbb C$. For any $\delta \in \pi_1({G})$, we prove that the moduli space of semistable…

We study singularities of constant positive Gaussian curvature surfaces and determine the way they bifurcate in generic 1-parameter families of such surfaces. We construct the bifurcations explicitly using loop group methods. Constant…

An orientation-preserving branched covering map $f\colon S^2 \to S^2$ is called a critically fixed Thurston map if $f$ fixes each of its critical points. It was recently shown that there is an explicit one-to-one correspondence between…

Let M be a smooth connected compact surface, P be either the real line R^1 or the circle S^1. For a subset X of M denote by D(M,X) the group of diffeomorphisms of M fixed on X. In this note we consider a special class F of smooth maps…

Let $\mathcal{X}_S$ denote the class of spaces homeomorphic to two closed orientable surfaces of genus greater than one identified to each other along an essential simple closed curve in each surface. Let $\mathcal{C}_S$ denote the set of…

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 note we prove that the mapping class group of a compact topological manifold $M$ with boundary is of finite type, under assumptions on its dimension and connectivity.

Group presentations are implicit descriptions of 2-dimensional cell complexes with only one vertex. While such complexes are usually sufficient for topological investigations of groups, multi-vertex complexes are often preferable when the…

The purpose of this article is to give a proof of the Orbifold Theorem announced by Thurston in late 1981: If $O$ is a compact, connected, orientable, irreducible and topologically atoroidal 3-orbifold with non-empty ramification locus,…

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…

This article surveys some recent work of the author on Hilbert modular fourfolds X. After some preliminaries on the cohomology and special, codimension 2 cycles Z on X of Hirzebruch-Zagier type, a proof of the Tate conjecture for X over…

In the eighties Goldman discovered a Lie algebra structure on the vector space generated by the free homotopy classes of oriented curves on an oriented surface. The Lie bracket [a,b] is defined as the signed sum over the intersection points…

Let S be a smooth projective surfaces and S^[n] the Hilbert scheme of zero-dimensional subschemes of S of length n. We proof that the class of S^[n] in the complex cobordism ring depends only on the class of the surface itself. Moreover, we…

We prove a well known conjecture of Nikolai Ivanov which states that if $X$ is a surface of genus $\geq 3$ (with any number of punctures and boundary components), $\rm{Mod}(X)$ is the mapping class group of $X$, and $K < \rm{Mod}(X)$ is a…

For a genus g handlebody H a simplicial complex, with vertices being isotopy classes of certain incompressible surfaces in H, is constructed and several properties are established. In particular, this complex naturally contains, as a…

A cobordism between links in thickened surfaces consists of a surface $ S $ and a $3$-manifold $M $, with $ S $ properly embedded in $ M \times I $. We show that there exist links in thickened surfaces such that if $(S,M) $ is a cobordism…

Let A be a basic connected finite dimensional algebra over an algebraically closed field, let G be a group, let T be a basic tilting A-module and let B the endomorphism algebra of T. Under a hypothesis on T, we establish a correspondence…

This paper shows that there is a mapping class group-equivariant deformation retraction of the Teichm\"uller space of a closed, orientable surface onto a cell complex of dimension equal to the virtual cohomological dimension of the mapping…