English

Rotation sets and actions on curves

Dynamical Systems 2021-04-23 v1 Group Theory Geometric Topology

Abstract

We study the action of the homeomorphism group of a surface SS on the fine curve graph C(S){\mathcal C }^\dagger(S). While the definition of C(S)\mathcal{C}^\dagger(S) parallels the classical curve graph for mapping class groups, we show that the dynamics of the action of Homeo(S){\mathrm{Homeo}}(S) on C(S)\mathcal{C}^\dagger(S) is much richer: homeomorphisms induce parabolic isometries in addition to elliptics and hyperbolics, and all positive reals are realized as asymptotic translation lengths. When the surface SS is a torus, we relate the dynamics of the action of a homeomorphism on C(S)\mathcal{C}^\dagger(S) to the dynamics of its action on the torus via the classical theory of rotation sets. We characterize homeomorphisms acting hyperbolically, show asymptotic translation length provides a lower bound for the area of the rotation set, and, while no characterisation purely in terms of rotation sets is possible, we give sufficient conditions for elements to be elliptic or parabolic.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2104.11217,
  title  = {Rotation sets and actions on curves},
  author = {Jonathan Bowden and Sebastian Hensel and Kathryn Mann and Emmanuel Militon and Richard Webb},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.11217},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

30 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:26:27.382Z