Automorphisms of profinite mapping class groups
Abstract
For a closed orientable differentiable surface of genus from which points have been removed, such that , let be the pure mapping class group of and and be, respectively, its profinite and its congruence completions, the latter being identified with the image of the natural representation (where is the profinite completion of the fundamental group of ). We determine the automorphism groups of procongruence completions under a natural rigidity condition, and show that the profinite Grothendieck-Teichm\"uller group embeds into the outer automorphism group of the profinite completion. Let and be the groups of outer automorphisms which preserve the conjugacy class of a procyclic subgroup generated by a nonseparating Dehn twist (a condition trivially satisfied for ). Our main result gives that, for and , there is a natural isomorphism: where is the symmetric group on letters and denotes the profinite Grothendieck-Teichm\"uller group. We also prove that, for , there is a natural faithful representation .
Cite
@article{arxiv.2011.15075,
title = {Automorphisms of profinite mapping class groups},
author = {Marco Boggi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.15075},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Revised version with improved exposition, updated introduction, and references; 53 pages