We prove a representation stability result for the second homology groups of Torelli subgroups of mapping class groups and automorphism groups of free groups. This strengthens the results of Boldsen-Hauge Dollerup and Day-Putman. We also prove a new representation stability result for the homology of certain congruence subgroups, partially improving upon the work of Putman-Sam. These results follow from a general theorem on syzygies of certain modules with finite polynomial degree.
These are the lecture notes for my course at the 2011 Park City Mathematics Graduate Summer School. The first two lectures covered the basics of the Torelli group and the Johnson homomorphism, and the third and fourth lectures discussed the second cohomology group of the level p congruence subgroup of the mapping class group, following my papers "The second rational homology group of the moduli space of curves with level structures" and "The Picard group of the moduli space of curves with level structures".
We develop a theory of equivariant group presentations and relate them to the second homology group of a group. Our main application says that the second homology group of the Torelli subgroup of the mapping class group is finitely generated as an $Sp(2g,\mathbb{Z})$-module.
We show for g > 6 that the second homology group of the Torelli group of a surface of genus g and 1 boundary component is generated as an Sp(2g,Z)-module by the image under the stabilization map of the second homology group of the Torelli group of a surface of genus 6 and 1 boundary component. In the process we also show that the quotient of the complex of arcs with identity permutation by the Torelli group is (g-2)-connected, for one or two boundary components.
Let IA_n be the Torelli subgroup of Aut(F_n). We give an explicit finite set of generators for H_2(IA_n) as a GL_n(Z)-module. Corollaries include a version of surjective representation stability for H_2(IA_n), the vanishing of the GL_n(Z)-coinvariants of H_2(IA_n), and the vanishing of the second rational homology group of the level l congruence subgroup of Aut(F_n). Our generating set is derived from a new group presentation for IA_n which is infinite but which has a simple recursive form.
In this paper we prove that the Rohlin invariant is the unique invariant inducing a homomorphism on the Torelli group. Using this result we generalize the construction of invariants of homology $3$-spheres from families of trivial 2-cocycles on the Torelli group given by Pitsch to include invariants with values on an abelian group with $2$-torsion.
The homology groups of many natural sequences of groups $\{G_n\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ (e.g. general linear groups, mapping class groups, etc.) stabilize as $n \rightarrow \infty$. Indeed, there is a well-known machine for proving such results that goes back to early work of Quillen. Church and Farb discovered that many sequences of groups whose homology groups do not stabilize in the classical sense actually stabilize in some sense as representations. They called this phenomena representation stability. We prove that the homology groups of congruence subgroups of $GL_n(R)$ (for almost any reasonabl…
The main target of this thesis is to solve the Perron's conjecture. This conjecture affirms that some function on the mod p Torelli group, with values in Z/p, is an invariant of mod p homology 3-spheres. In order to solve this conjecture, in this thesis we first study the mod p homology 3-spheres, the rational homology 3-spheres and those that can be realized as a Heegaard splitting with gluing map an element of the mod p Torelli group. In particular we give a criterion to determine whenever a rational homology 3-sphere has a Heegaard splitting with gluing map an element of the Torelli group m…
The Torelli group of a manifold is the group of all diffeomorphisms which act as the identity on the homology of the manifold. In this paper, we calculate the invariant part (invariant under the action of the automorphisms of the homology) of the cohomology of the classifying space of the Torelli group of certain high-dimensional, highly connected manifolds, with rational coefficients and in a certain range of degrees. This is based on Galatius--Randal-Williams' work on the diffeomorphism groups of these manifolds, Borel's classical results on arithmetic groups, and methods from surgery theory…
We answer positively a question of Church, Miller, Nagpal and Reinhold on existence of a linear bound on the presentation degree of the homology of a complex of FI-modules. This implies a linear stable range for the homology of congruence subgroups of general linear groups.
In this paper, we classify the congruence classes of $\mathbf{F}^5_{n(2)}$-polyhedra, i.e. $(n-1)$-connected, at most $(n+5)$-dimensional polyhedra with 2-torsion free homology. The proof relies on the matrix problem technique which was developed in the classification of representations of algebras and applied to homotopy theory by Baues and Drozd.
We show in this work that homology in degree d of a congruence group, in a very general framework, defines a weakly polynomial functor of degree at most 2d and we describe this functor modulo polynomial functors of smaller degree. Our main tool is a spectral sequence connecting homology of congruence-like groups (in a formal setting close to the one introduced with Vespa in 2010 for orthogonal groups) and functor homology. We prove and use in a crucial way properties of some tensor structures and derived Kan extensions on polynomial functors.Our results extend especially, with different method…
In a previous paper, the author (together with Matthew Emerton) proved that the completed cohomology groups of SL_N(Z) are stable in fixed degree as N goes to infinity (Z may be replaced by the ring O_F of integers of any number field). In this paper, we relate these completed cohomology groups to K-theory and Galois cohomology. Various consequences include showing that Borel's stable classes become infinitely p-divisible up the p-congruence tower if and only if a certain p-adic zeta value is non-zero. We use our results to compute H_2(Gamma_N(p),F_p) (for sufficiently large N) where Gamma_N(p…
We study the algebraic property of the representation of the mapping class group of a closed oriented surface of genus 2 constructed by VFR Jones [Annals of Math. 126 (1987) 335-388]. It arises from the Iwahori-Hecke algebra representations of Artin's braid group of 6 strings, and is defined over integral Laurent polynomials Z[t, t^{-1}]. We substitute the parameter t with -e^{h}, and then expand the powers e^h in their Taylor series. This expansion naturally induces a filtration on the Torelli group which is coarser than its lower central series. We present some results on the structure of th…
Let I_g,* denote the (pointed) Torelli group. This is the group of homotopy classes of homeomorphisms of the genus g >= 2 surface S_g with a marked point, acting trivially on H := H_1(S_g). In 1983 Johnson constructed a beautiful family of invariants tau_i: H_i(I_g,*) -> /\^{i+2} H for 0 <= i <= 2g-2, using a kind of Abel-Jacobi map for families, in order to detect nontrivial cycles in I_g,*. Johnson proved that tau_1 is an isomorphism rationally, and asked if the same is true for tau_i with i > 1. The goal of this paper is to introduce various methods for computing tau_i; in particular we pro…
Let $Γ$ be a finite-index subgroup of the mapping class group of a closed genus $g$ surface that contains the Torelli group. For instance, $Γ$ can be the level $L$ subgroup or the spin mapping class group. We show that $H_2(Γ;\Q) \cong \Q$ for $g \geq 5$. A corollary of this is that the rational Picard groups of the associated finite covers of the moduli space of curves are equal to $\Q$. We also prove analogous results for surface with punctures and boundary components.
Scissors congruence groups have traditionally been expressed algebraically in terms of group homology. We give an alternate construction of these groups by producing them as the $0$-level in the algebraic $K$-theory of a Waldhausen category.
We prove an explicit and sharp upper bound for the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of an FI-module V in terms of the degrees of its generators and relations. We use this to refine a result of Putman on the stability of homology of congruence subgroups, extending his theorem to previously excluded small characteristics and to integral homology while maintaining explicit bounds for the stable range.
We prove a homological stability theorem for congruence subgroups of symplectic groups. From this theorem, we deduce a generalization of a theorem of Borel showing that certain homology groups of a congruence subgroup do not depend on the level of the congruence subgroup.
Let $R$ be a commutative ring that is free of rank $k$ as an abelian group, $p$ a prime, and $SL(n,R)$ the special linear group. We show that the Lie algebra associated to the filtration of $SL(n,R)$ by $p$-congruence subgroups is isomorphic to the tensor product $\mathfrak{sl}_n(R\otimes_{\Z}\Z/p)\otimes_{\F_p}t\F_p[t]$, the Lie algebra of polynomials with zero constant term and coefficients $n\times n$ traceless matrices with entries polynomials in $k$ variables over $\F_p$. We use the Lie algebra structure along with the Lyndon-Hochschild-Serre spectral sequence to compute the $d^2$ homolog…
We prove that the twisted K-homology of a simply connected simple Lie group G of rank n is an exterior algebra on n-1 generators tensor a cyclic group. We give a detailed description of the order of this cyclic group in terms of the dimensions of irreducible representations of G and show that the congruences determining this cyclic order lift along the twisted index map to relations in the twisted Spin-c bordism group of G.
This work is NOT to be used as reference. First, because as C.F.~Bödigheimer and M.~Korkmaz pointed to us the computation of the $\mathbf{Z}_2$ factor that remained undecided in M.~Korkmaz and A. Stipsicz, {\em The second homology groups of mapping class groups of orientable surfaces.} Math. Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc., was shown to exist by Skasai, see hi Theorem 4.9 and Corollary 4.10 in {\em Lagrangian mapping class groups from a group homological point of view.} Algebr. Geom. Topol. 12 (2012), no. 1, 267--291. Second, because one could obtain this result by gathering old results in the literatu…
We introduce a technique for proving quantitative representation stability theorems for sequences of representations of certain finite linear groups over a field of characteristic zero. In particular, we prove a vanishing result for higher syzygies of VIC- and SI-modules, which can be thought of as a weaker version of a regularity theorem of Church-Ellenberg in the context of FI-modules. We apply these techniques to the rational homology of congruence subgroups of mapping class groups and congruence subgroups of automorphism groups of free groups. This partially resolves a question raised by C…
We prove new vanishing results on the growth of higher torsion homologies for suitable arithmetic lattices, Artin groups and mapping class groups. The growth is understood along Farber sequences, in particular, along residual chains. For principal congruence subgroups, we also obtain strong asymptotic bounds for the torsion growth. As a central tool, we introduce a quantitative homotopical method called effective rebuilding. This constructs small classifying spaces of finite index subgroups, at the same time controlling the complexity of the homotopy. The method easily applies to free abelian …
We introduce the idea of *representation stability* (and several variations) for a sequence of representations V_n of groups G_n. A central application of the new viewpoint we introduce here is the importation of representation theory into the study of homological stability. This makes it possible to extend classical theorems of homological stability to a much broader variety of examples. Representation stability also provides a framework in which to find and to predict patterns, from classical representation theory (Littlewood--Richardson and Murnaghan rules, stability of Schur functors), to …
