Do and Norbury found a so-called differential relation which relates the volume of the moduli space of singular surface with a cone point to that of a smooth surface obtained by forgetting the cone point. Their procedure is valid for cone angles less than $π$ by work of Tan, Wong and Zhang. We study the moduli space of a surface with a single cone point of angle ranging from $0$ to $2π$ using a coordinate system closely related to Penner's $λ$-lengths. We compute the action of the mapping class group in these coordinates, give an explicit expression for Wolpert's symplectic form and use this to justify Do and Norbury's approach using just hyperbolic geometry.
We compute the number of systoles, the shortest simple closed geodesics and 2-systoles, the second shortest simple closed geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces homeomorphic to once-punctured torus and four-punctured sphere.
In this paper, we characterize non-hyperbolic 3-component links in the 3-sphere whose exteriors contain essential 3-punctured spheres with non-integral boundary slopes. We also show the existence of embeddings of some multibranched surfaces in the 3-sphere which satisfy some homological conditions to be embedded in the 3-sphere.
We prove a strong form of finite rigidity for pants graphs of spheres. Specifically, for any $n\geq4$, we construct a finite subgraph $X_n$ of the pants graph $P(S_{0,n})$ of the n-punctured sphere $S_{0,n}$ with the following property. Any simplicial embedding of $X_n$ into any pants graph $P(S_{0,m})$ of a punctured sphere is induced by an embedding $S_{0,n} \to S_{0,m}$.
We consider the relationship between hyperbolic cone-manifold structures on surfaces, and algebraic representations of the fundamental group into a group of isometries. A hyperbolic cone-manifold structure on a surface, with all interior cone angles being integer multiples of $2π$, determines a holonomy representation of the fundamental group. We ask, conversely, when a representation of the fundamental group is the holonomy of a hyperbolic cone-manifold structure. In this paper we prove results for the punctured torus; in the sequel, for higher genus surfaces. We show that a representation of…
This paper gives a new obstruction for ribbon-move equivalence of 2-knots. Let $K$ and $K'$ be 2-knots. Let $K$ and $K'$ are ribbon-move equivalent. One corollary to our main theorem is as follows. A 2-dimensional fibered knot whose fiber is the punctured 3-dimensional torus is not ribbon-move equivalent to any 2-dimensional knot whose Seifert hypersurface is a punctured homology sphere.
We give counterexamples to a question of Bowditch that if a non-elementary type-preserving representation $ρ:π_1(Σ_{g,n})\rightarrow PSL(2;\mathbb R)$ of a punctured surface group sends every non-peripheral simple closed curve to a hyperbolic element, then must $ρ$ be Fuchsian. The counterexamples come from relative Euler class $\pm1$ representations of the four-punctured sphere group. We also show that the mapping class group action on each non-extremal component of the character space of type-preserving representations of the four-punctured sphere group is ergodic, which confirms a conjectur…
Let $S_{0,n}$ be an $n$-punctured sphere. For $n\geq 4$, we construct a sequence $(\mathcal{X}_i)_{i\in\mathbb{N}}$ of finite rigid sets in the pants graph $\mathcal{P}(S_{0,n})$ such that $\mathcal{X}_1 \subset \mathcal{X}_2 \subset ...\subset\mathcal{P}(S_{0,n})$ and $\bigcup_{i\geq1}\mathcal{X}_i=\mathcal{P}(S_{0,n})$.
We classify the topological types for the unions of the totally geodesic 3-punctured spheres in orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds. General types of the unions appear in various hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Each of the special types of the unions appears only in a single hyperbolic 3-manifold or Dehn fillings of a single hyperbolic 3-manifold. Furthermore, we investigate bounds of the moduli of adjacent cusps for the union of linearly placed 3-punctured spheres.
Every closed hyperbolic geodesic $γ$ on the triply--punctured sphere $M =\widehat{\mathbb C} - \{0,1,\infty\}$ has a self--intersection number $I(γ) \ge 1$ and a combinatorial length $L(γ) \ge 2$, the latter defined by the number of times $γ$ passes through the upper halfplane. In this paper we show that $δ(γ) = I(γ) - L(γ) \ge -1$ for all closed geodesics; and that for each fixed $δ$, the number of geodesics with invariants $(δ,L)$ is given exactly by a quadratic polynomial $p_δ(L)$ for all $L \ge 4 + δ$.
Let $S_n$ be a punctured Riemann spheres $\mathbf{S}^2\backslash \{x_1,..., x_n\}$. In this paper, we investigate pseudo-Anosov maps on $S_n$ that are isotopic to the identity on $S_n\cup \{x_n\}$ and have the smallest possible dilatations. We show that those maps cannot be obtained from Thurston's construction (that is the products of two Dehn twists). We also prove that those pseudo-Anosov maps $f$ on $S_n$ with the minimum dilatations can never define a trivial mapping class as any puncture $x_i$ of $S_n$ is filled in. The main tool is to give both lower and upper bounds estimations for dil…
A string figure is topologically a trivial knot lying on an imaginary plane orthogonal to the fingers with some crossings. The fingers prevent cancellation of these crossings. As a mathematical model of string figure we consider a knot diagram on the $xy$-plane in $xyz$-space missing some straight lines parallel to the $z$-axis. These straight lines correspond to fingers. We study minimal number of crossings of these knot diagrams under Reidemeister moves missing these lines.
Let $Γ$ be a subgroup of $PSL(2,R)$ generated by three parabolic transformations. The main goal of this paper is to present an algorithm to determine whether or not $Γ$ is discrete. Historically discreteness algorithms have been considered within several broader mathematical paradigms: the discreteness problem, the construction and deformation of hyperbolic structures on surfaces and notions of automata for groups. Each of these approaches yield equivalent results. The second goal of this paper is to give an exposition of the basic ideas needed to interpret these equivalences, emphasizing rela…
We prove that, among the polygons in a punctured disc with fixed angles, the perimeter is minimized by the polygon with an inscribed horocycle centered at the puncture. We generalize this to a disc with a cone point and to an annulus with a geodesic boundary component and a complete end. Then we apply this result to describe the minimum of the spine systole on the moduli space of punctured surfaces.
This is the first of at least two articles that describe the moduli spaces of pseudoholomorphic, multiply punctured spheres in R x (S^1 x S^2) as defined by a certain natural pair of almost complex structure and symplectic form. This article proves that all moduli space components are smooth manifolds. Necessary and sufficient conditions are also given for a collection of closed curves in S^1 x S^2 to appear as the set of |s| --> infinity limits of the constant s in R slices of a pseudoholomorphic, multiply punctured sphere.
In this paper, we study punctured spheres in two dimensional ball quotient compactifications $(X, D)$. For example, we show that smooth toroidal compactifications of ball quotients cannot contain properly holomorphically embedded $3$-punctured spheres. We also use totally geodesic punctured spheres to prove ampleness of $K_X + αD$ for $α\in (\frac{1}{4}, 1)$, giving a sharp version of a theorem of the first author with G. Di Cerbo. Finally, we produce the first examples of bielliptic ball quotient compactifications modeled on the Gaussian integers.
This article is dedicated to prove Buser's conjecture about Bers' constants for spheres with cusps (or marked points) and for hyperelliptic surfaces. More specifically, our main theorem states that any hyperbolic sphere with $n$ cusps has a pants decomposition with all of its geodesics of length bounded by a constant roughly square root of $n$. Other results include lower and upper bounds for Bers' constants for hyperelliptic surfaces and spheres with boundary geodesics.
This is the second of two articles that describe the moduli spaces of pseudoholomorphic, multiply punctured spheres in R x (S^1 x S^2) as defined by a certain natural pair of almost complex structure and symplectic form. The first article in this series described the local structure of the moduli spaces and gave existence theorems. This article describes a stratification of the moduli spaces and gives explicit parametrizations for the various strata.
We find bounds for the length of the systole -- the shortest essential, non-peripheral closed curve -- for arithmetic punctured spheres with $n$ cusps, for $n=4$ through $n=12$, some of which were previously known due to Schmutz. This is shown using a correspondence between such surfaces and planar triangulations. We show that for $n=7,10,11$, arithmetic surfaces do not achieve the maximal systole length.
We give a complete description of finite braid group orbits in Aff(C)-character varieties of the punctured Riemann sphere. This is performed thanks to a coalescence procedure and to the theory of finite complex reflection groups. We then derive consequences in the theory of differential equations. These concern algebraicity of isomonodromic deformations for reducible rank two logarithmic connections on the sphere, the Riemann-Hilbert problem and F_D-type Lauricella hypergeometric functions.
We calculate the virtually-cyclic dimension of the mapping class group of a sphere with at most six punctures. As an immediate consequence, we obtain the virtually-cyclic dimension of the mapping class group of the twice-holed torus and of the closed genus-two surface.
We exhibit the traceless $SU(2)$ character variety of a 6-punctured 2-sphere as a 2-fold branched cover of ${\mathbb{C}}P^3$, branched over the singular Kummer surface, with the branch locus in $R(S^2,6)$ corresponding to the binary dihedral representations. This follows from an analysis of the map induced on $SU(2)$ character varieties by the 2-fold branched cover $F_{n-1}\to S^2$ branched over $2n$ points, combined with the theorem of Narasimhan-Ramanan which identifies $R(F_2)$ with ${\mathbb{C}} P^3$. The singular points of $R(S^2,6)$ correspond to abelian representations, and we prove tha…
We show that essential punctured spheres in the complement of links with distance three bridge spheres have bounded complexity. We define the operation of tangle product, a generalization of both connected sum and Conway product. Finally, we use the bounded complexity of essential punctured spheres to show that the bridge number of a tangle product is at least the sum of the bridge numbers of the two factor links up to a constant error.
For an appropriate choice of a $\mathbb{Z}$-grading structure, we prove that the wrapped Fukaya category of the symmetric square of a $(k+3)$-punctured sphere, i.e. the Weinstein manifold given as the complement of $(k+3)$ generic lines in $\mathbb{C}P^2$ is quasi-equivalent to the derived category of coherent sheaves on a singular surface $\mathcal{Z}_{2,k}$ constructed as the boundary of a toric Landau-Ginzburg model $(\mathcal{X}_{2,k}, \mathbf{w}_{2,k})$. We do this by first constructing a quasi-equivalence between certain categorical resolutions of both sides and then localising. We also …
In this paper we show that the normal closure of the mth power of a half-twist has infinite index in the mapping class group of a punctured sphere. Furthermore, in some cases we prove that the quotient of the mapping class group of the punctured sphere by the normal closure of a power of a half-twist contains a free abelian subgroup. As a corollary we prove that the quotient of the hyperelliptic mapping class group of a surface of genus at least two by the normal closure of the mth power of a Dehn twist has infinite order, and for some integers m the quotient contains a free nonabelian subgrou…
Let $Γ$ be a 3-dimensional Kleinian punctured torus group with ccidental parabolic transformations. The deformation space of $Γ$ in the group of Möbius transformations on the 2-sphere is well-known as the Maskit slice of punctured torus groups. In this paper, we study deformations $Γ'$ of $Γ$ in the group of Möbius transformations on the 3-sphere such that $Γ'$ does not contain screw parabolic transformations. We will show that the space of the deformations is realized as a domain of 3-space $\mathbb{R}^3$, which contains the Maskit slice of punctured torus groups as a slice through a plane. F…
We show that associating the Euclidean cell decomposition due to Cooper and Long to each point of the moduli space of framed strictly convex real projective structures of finite volume on the once-punctured torus gives this moduli space a natural cell decomposition. The proof makes use of coordinates due to Fock and Goncharov, the action of the mapping class group as well as algorithmic real algebraic geometry. We also show that the decorated moduli space of framed strictly convex real projective structures of finite volume on the thrice-punctured sphere has a natural cell decomposition.
Our aim is to determine the lower central series (LCS) and derived series (DS) for the braid groups of the sphere and of the finitely-punctured sphere. We show that for all n (resp. all n\geq 5), the LCS (resp. DS) of the n-string braid group B\_n(S^2) is constant from the commutator subgroup onwards, and that Γ\_2(B\_4(S^2)) is a semi-direct product of the quaternion group by a free group of rank 2. For n=4, we determine the DS of B\_4(S^2), as well as its quotients. For n \geq 1, the class of m-string braid groups B\_m(S^2) \ {x\_1,...,x\_n} of the n-punctured sphere includes the Artin braid…
We study the ideal triangulation graph $T(S)$ of a punctured surface $S$ of finite type. We show that if $S$ is not the sphere with at most three punctures or the torus with one puncture, then the natural map from the extended mapping class group of $S$ into the simplicial automorphism group of $T(S)$ is an isomorphism. We also show that under the same conditions on $S$, the graph $T(S)$ equipped with its natural simplicial metric is not Gromov hyperbolic. Thus, from the point of view of Gromov hyperbolicity, the situation of $T(S)$ is different from that of the curve complex of $S$.
Given a properly embedded graph Gamma in a ball B and a punctured sphere Sigma properly embedded in B - Gamma, we examine the conditions on Gamma that are necessary to assure that Sigma is boundary parallel.
The strip map is a natural map from the arc complex of a bordered hyperbolic surface $S$ to the vector space of infinitesimal deformations of $S$. We prove that the image of the strip map is a convex hypersurface when $S$ is a surface of small complexity: the punctured torus or thrice punctured sphere.
Deligne and Mostow constructed a class of lattices in PU(2,1) using monodromy of hypergeometric functions. Later, Thurston reinterpreted them in terms of cone metrics on the sphere. In this spirit we construct a fundamental domain for all lattices with three fold symmetry in Deligne-Mostow list. This is a generalisation of the works of Parker and Boadi and gives a different interpretation of the fundamental domain constructed by Deraux, Falbel and Paupert for some of these lattices.
We study the space $C(a_0,a_1,\dots,a_n)$ of hyperbolic 2-spheres with cone points of prescribed apex curvatures $2a_0,2a_1,\dots,2a_n\in]0,2π[$ and some related spaces. For $n=3$, we get a detailed description of such spaces. The euclidean 2-spheres were considered by W. P. Thurston: for $n=4$, the corresponding spaces provide the famous 7 examples of nonarithmetic compact holomorphic 2-ball quotients previously constructed by Deligne-Mostow.
Given a link L in the 3-sphere, we ask whether the components of L bound disjoint, nullhomologous disks properly embedded in a simply-connected positive-definite smooth 4-manifold; the knot case has been studied extensively in work of Cochran-Harvey-Horn. Such a 4-manifold is necessarily homeomorphic to a (punctured) connected sum of CP(2)'s. We characterize all links that are slice in a (punctured) connected sum of CP(2)'s in terms of ribbon moves and an operation which we call adding a generalized positive crossing. We find obstructions in the form of the Levine-Tristram signature function, …
The Maskit embedding M of a surface Σis the space of geometrically finite groups on the boundary of quasifuchsian space for which the `top' end is homeomorphic to Σ, while the `bottom' end consists of two triply punctured spheres, the remains of Σwhen two fixed disjoint curves have been pinched. As such representations vary in the character variety, the conformal structure on the top side varies over the Teichmüller space T(Σ). We investigate M when Σis a twice punctured torus, using the method of pleating rays. Fix a projective measure class [μ] supported on closed curves on Σ. The pleating r…
In this paper, we construct polynomial growth harmonic maps from once-punctured Riemann surfaces of any finite genus to any even-sided, regular, ideal polygon in the hyperbolic plane. We also establish their uniqueness within a class of maps which differ by exponentially decaying variations. Previously, harmonic maps from once-punctured spheres to the hyperbolic plane have been parameterized by holomorphic quadratic differentials on the complex plane. Our harmonic maps, mapping a genus g>1 domain to a k-sided polygon, correspond to meromorphic quadratic differentials having one pole of order (…
For a punctured surface $S$, we characterize the representations of its fundamental group into $\mathrm{PSL}_2 (\mathbb{C})$ that arise as the monodromy of a meromorphic projective structure on $S$ with poles of order at most two and no apparent singularities. This proves the analogue of a theorem of Gallo-Kapovich-Marden concerning $\mathbb{C}\mathrm{P}^1$-structures on closed surfaces, and settles a long-standing question about characterizing monodromy groups for the Schwarzian equation on punctured spheres. The proof involves a geometric interpretation of the Fock-Goncharov coordinates of t…
We consider the relationship between hyperbolic cone-manifold structures on surfaces, and algebraic representations of the fundamental group into a group of isometries. A hyperbolic cone-manifold structure on a surface, with all interior cone angles being integer multiples of $2π$, determines a holonomy representation of the fundamental group. We ask, conversely, when a representation of the fundamental group is the holonomy of a hyperbolic cone-manifold structure. In this paper we build upon previous work with punctured tori to prove results for higher genus surfaces. Our techniques construct…
We construct embeddings of simplicial complexes into a (surface of a) simplicial ball whose triangulation has bounded degrees and low volume. This construction can be used either to efficiently "simplify a complicated space" by realizing it as a part of a ball/sphere, or to "complexify" a sphere - to give it a specific metric that inherits desired properties from an embedded complex.
