Dehn twists and pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphisms

Summary We show that it is possible to obtain many pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphisms from Dehn twists. In particular, we generalize a theorem of Long and Morton to obtain that iff is a pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphism of an oriented surface andT is the Dehn twist around the simple closed curve , then the isotopy class ofTⁿf contains a pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphism except for at most 7 consecutive values ofn.