Clustering of critical points in Lefschetz fibrations and the symplectic Szpiro inequality

We prove upper bounds for the number of critical points in semi- stable symplectic Lefschetz fibrations. We also obtain a new lower bound for the number of nonseparating vanishing cycles in Lefschetz pencils and reprove the known lower bounds for the commutator lengths of Dehn twists.

     

On the commutator length of a Dehn twist

We show that on a nonorientable surface of genus at least 7 any power of a Dehn twist is equal to a single commutator in the mapping class group and the same is true, under additional assumptions, for the twist subgroup, and also for the extended mapping class group of an orientable surface of genus at least 3.     

Twisting Out Fully Irreducible Automorphisms

By a theorem of Thurston, in the subgroup of the mapping class group generated by Dehn twists around two curves which fill, every element not conjugate to a power of one of the twists is pseudo-Anosov. We prove an analogue of this theorem for the outer automorphism group of a free group.     

Roots of crosscap slides and crosscap transpositions

Periodica Mathematica Hungarica - Let $$N_{g}$$ denote a closed nonorientable surface of genus g. For $$g \ge 2$$ the mapping class group $$\mathcal {M}(N_{g})$$ is generated by Dehn twists and one...     

Degree of roots of disk twists on 3-dimensional handlebodies

Margalit and Schleimer (Geom Topol 13(3):1495–1497, 2009) discovered a nontrivial root of the Dehn twist about a nonseparating curve on a closed oriented connected surface. McCullough and Rajeevsarathy (Geom Dedicata 151(1):397–409, 2011) and Monden (Rocky Mt J Math, to appear) obtained the evaluation of the degrees of roots of Dehn twists. In this paper, we discuss existence and degrees of homeomorphisms whose power is equal to disk twist about a nonseparating disk in the mapping class group of the 3-dimensional handlebody.     

On the signature of a Lefschetz fibration coming from an involution

In this article we show that the signature of a Lefschetz fibration coming from a special involution as a product of right-handed Dehn twists depends only on the number of genus on the involution axis. We investigate the geography of such Lefschetz fibrations and we identify it with a blow up of a ruled surface. We also get a geography of the Lefschetz fibration coming from a finite order element of mapping class group as a composition of two special involutions.     

Crosscap slides and the level 2 mapping class group of a nonorientable surface

Crosscap slide is a homeomorphism of a nonorientable surface of genus at least 2, which was introduced under the name Y-homeomorphism by Lickorish as an example of an element of the mapping class group which cannot be expressed as a product of Dehn twists. We prove that the subgroup of the mapping class group of a closed nonorientable surface N generated by all crosscap slides is equal to the level 2 subgroup consisting of those mapping classes which act trivially on ${H_1(N;\mathbb{Z}_2)}$ . We also prove that this subgroup is generated by involutions.     

Generating the surface mapping class group by two elements

Wajnryb proved in 1996 that the mapping class group of an orientable surface is generated by two elements. We prove that one of these generators can be taken as a Dehn twist. We also prove that the extended mapping class group is generated by two elements, again one of which is a Dehn twist. Another result we prove is that the mapping class groups are also generated by two elements of finite order.

     

A presentation for the mapping class group of the closed non-orientable surface of genus 4

In [B. Szepietowski, A presentation for the mapping class group of a non-orientable surface from the action on the complex of curves, Osaka J. Math. 45 (2008) 283-326] we proposed a method of finding a finite presentation for the mapping class group of a non-orientable surface by using its action on the so called ordered complex of curves. In this paper we use this method to obtain an explicit finite presentation for the mapping class group of the closed non-orientable surface of genus 4. The set of generators in this presentation consists of 5 Dehn twists, 3 crosscap transpositions and one involution, and it can be immediately reduced to the generating set found by Chillingworth [D.R.J. Chillingworth, A finite set of generators for the homeotopy group of a non-orientable surface, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 65 (1969) 409-430].     

Five-Dimensional Contact SU(2)- and SO(3)-Manifolds and Dehn Twists

In the first part of this paper the five-dimensional contact SO(3)-manifolds are classified up to equivariant coorientation preserving contactomorphisms. The construction of such manifolds with singular orbits requires the use of generalized Dehn twists. We show as an application that all simply connected 5-manifolds with singular orbits are realized by a Brieskorn manifold with exponents (k,2,2,2). The standard contact structure on such a manifold gives right-handed Dehn twists, and a second contact structure defined in the article gives left-handed twists. In an appendix we also describe the classification of five-dimensional contact SU(2)-manifolds.     

Geometrization of Dehn Twist Tori of a Surface with Infinite Genus

The conditions under which an infinite three-dimensional graph manifold M carries a metric of nonpositive bounded curvature (an NPC-metric) having finite volume are studied. A complete list of all such manifolds is obtained in the case where M is the mapping torus of a collection of Dehn twists on a surface of infinite genus and the graph of M is linear (i.e., homeomorphic to a line or a ray). Bibliography: 4 titles.     

Braids,mapping class groups,and categorical delooping

Dehn twists around simple closed curves in oriented surfaces satisfy the braid relations. This gives rise to a group theoretic map from the braid group to the mapping class group. We prove here that this map is trivial in homology with any trivial coefficients in degrees less than g/2. In particular this proves an old conjecture of J. Harer. The main tool is categorical delooping in the spirit of (Tillmann in Invent Math 130:257–175, 1997). By extending the homomorphism to a functor of monoidal 2-categories, is seen to induce a map of double loop spaces on the plus construction of the classifying spaces. Any such map is null-homotopic. In an appendix we show that geometrically defined homomorphisms from the braid group to the mapping class group behave similarly in stable homology. The first author was supported by Inha University research grant.     

Adiabatic limits of η-invariants and the Meyer functions

We construct a function on the orbifold fundamental group of the moduli space of smooth theta divisors, which we call the Meyer function for smooth theta divisors. In the construction, we use the adiabatic limits of the η-invariants of the mapping torus of theta divisors. We shall prove that the Meyer function for smooth theta divisors cobounds the signature cocycle, and we determine the values of the Meyer function for the Dehn twists. In particular, we give an analytic construction of the Meyer function of genus two.     

On a minimal factorization conjecture

Let be a proper holomorphic map from a connected complex surface S onto the open unit disk D⊂C, with 0∈D as its unique singular value, and having fiber genus g>0. Assume that in case g?2, admits a deformation whose singular fibers are all of simple Lefschetz type. It has been conjectured that the factorization of the monodromy f∈Mg around ?⁻¹(0) in terms of right-handed Dehn twists induced by the monodromy of has the least number of factors among all possible factorizations of f as a product of right-handed Dehn twists in the mapping class group (see [M. Ishizaka, One parameter families of Riemann surfaces and presentations of elements of mapping class group by Dehn twists, J. Math. Soc. Japan 58 (2) (2006) 585-594]). In this article, the validity of this conjecture is established for g=1.     

Twist decompositions of gluing homeomorphisms of planar Heegaard diagrams of genus two

We will give a very simple algorithm to decompose a gluing homeomorphism of a planar Heegaard diagram of genus two into Dehn twists associated with the canonical base.

     

Open book decompositions for contact structures on Brieskorn manifolds

In this paper, we give an open book decomposition for the contact structures on some Brieskorn manifolds, in particular for the contact structures of Ustilovsky. The decomposition uses right-handed Dehn twists as conjectured by Giroux.

     

Factoring periodic maps into Dehn twists

Let $\mathrm{Mod}(S_g)$ be the mapping class group of the closed orientable surface $S_g$ of genus $g\ge 1$. In this paper, we develop various methods for factoring periodic mapping classes into Dehn twists, up to conjugacy. As applications, we develop methods for factoring certain roots of Dehn twists as words in Dehn twists. We will also show the existence of conjugates of periodic maps of order 4g and $4g+2$, for $g\ge 2$, whose product is pseudo-Anosov.     

Fractional Dehn twists and modular invariants

In this paper, we establish a relationship between fractional Dehn twist coefficients of Riemann surface automorphisms and modular invariants of holomorphic families of algebraic curves. Specially, we give a characterization of pseudo-periodic maps with nontrivial fractional Dehn twist coefficients. We also obtain some uniform lower bounds of non-zero fractional Dehn twist coefficients.     

Quasimorphisms,random walks,and transient subsets in countable groups

We study the interrelations between the theory of quasimorphisms and the theory of random walks on groups, and establish the following transience criterion for subsets of groups: if a subset of a countable group has bounded images under any three linearly independent homogeneous quasimorphisms on the group, the this subset is transient for all nondegenerate random walks on the group. From this it follows, by results of M. Bestvina, K. Fujiwara, J. Birman, W. Menasco, and others, that, in a certain sense, generic elements in the mapping class groups of surfaces are pseudo-Anosov, generic braids in Artin’s braid groups represent prime links and knots, generic elements in the commutant of every nonelementary hyperbolic group have large stable commutator length, etc. Bibliography: 20 titles.