We address the question of determining which mapping class groups of infinite-type surfaces admit nonelementary continuous actions on hyperbolic spaces.
More precisely, let $Σ$ be a connected, orientable surface of infinite type with tame endspace whose mapping class group is generated by a coarsely bounded subset. We prove that $\mathrm{Map}(Σ)$ admits a continuous nonelementary action on a hyperbolic space if and only if $Σ$ contains a finite-type subsurface which intersects all its homeomorphic translates.
When $Σ$ contains such a nondisplaceable subsurface $K$ of finite type, the hyperbolic space we build is constructed from the curve graphs of $K$ and its homeomorphic translates via a construction of Bestvina, Bromberg and Fujiwara. Our construction has several applications: first, the second bounded cohomology of $\mathrm{Map}(Σ)$ contains an embedded $\ell^1$; second, using work of Dahmani, Guirardel and Osin, we deduce that $\mathrm{Map}(Σ)$ contains nontrivial normal free subgroups (while it does not if $Σ$ has no nondisplaceable subsurface of finite type), has uncountably many quotients and is SQ-universal.
We give a criterion to prove that some groups are not acylindrically hyperbolic. As an application, we prove that the mapping class group of an infinite type surface is not acylindrically hyperbolic.
The aim of this note is to give the simplest possible proof that Mapping Class Groups of closed hyperbolic surfaces are acylindrically hyperbolic, and more specifically that their curve graphs are hyperbolic and that pseudo-Anosovs act on them as loxodromic WPDs.
We prove that for every countable group G there exists a hyperbolic 3-manifold M such that the isometry group of M, the mapping class group of M, and the outer automorphism group of the fundamental group of M are isomorphic to G.
In this note we show that many subgroups of mapping class groups of infinite-type surfaces without boundary have trivial centers, including all normal subgroups. Using similar techniques, we show that every nontrivial normal subgroup of a big mapping class group contains a nonabelian free group. In contrast, we show that no big mapping class group satisfies the strong Tits alternative enjoyed by finite-type mapping class groups. We also give examples of big mapping class groups that fail to satisfy even the classical Tits alternative and give a proof that every countable group appears as a sub…
Even though big mapping class groups are not countably generated, certain big mapping class groups can be generated by a coarsely bounded set and have a well defined quasi-isometry type. We show that the big mapping class group of a stable surface of infinite type with a coarsely bounded generating set that contains an essential shift has infinite asymptotic dimension. This is in contrast with the mapping class groups of surfaces of finite type where the asymptotic dimension is always finite. We also give a topological characterization of essential shifts.
We study mapping class groups of infinite type surfaces with isolated punctures and their actions on the loop graphs introduced by Bavard-Walker. We classify all of the mapping classes in these actions which are loxodromic with a WWPD action on the corresponding loop graph. The WWPD property is a weakening of Bestvina-Fujiwara's weak proper discontinuity and is useful for constructing non-trivial quasimorphisms. We use this classification to give a sufficient criterion for subgroups of big mapping class groups to have infinite-dimensional second bounded cohomology and use this criterion to giv…
We show that any isomorphism between mapping class groups of orientable infinite-type surfaces is induced by a homeomorphism between the surfaces. Our argument additionally applies to automorphisms between finite-index subgroups of these `big' mapping class groups and shows that each finite-index subgroup has finite outer automorphism group. As a key ingredient, we prove that all simplicial automorphisms between curve complexes of infinite-type orientable surfaces are induced by homeomorphisms.
We prove that the mapping torus group $\FN \rtimes_α \Z$ of any automorphism $α$ of a free group $\FN$ of finite rank $n \geq 2$ is weakly hyperbolic relative to the canonical (up to conjugation) family $\mathcal H(α)$ of subgroups of $\FN$ which consists of (and contains representatives of all) conjugacy classes that grow polynomially under iteration of $α$. Furthermore, we show that $\FN \rtimes_α \Z$ is strongly hyperbolic relative to the mapping torus of the family $\mathcal H(α)$. As an application, we use a result of Drutu-Sapir to deduce that $\FN \rtimes_α \Z$ has Rapic Decay.
We prove that the first integral cohomology of pure mapping class groups of infinite type genus one surfaces is trivial. For genus zero surfaces we prove that not every homomorphism to $\mathbb{Z}$ factors through a sphere with finitely many punctures. In fact we get an uncountable family of such maps.
We study stable commutator length on mapping class groups of certain infinite-type surfaces. In particular, we show that stable commutator length defines a continuous function on the commutator subgroups of such infinite-type mapping class groups. We furthermore show that the commutator subgroups are open and closed subgroups and that the abelianizations are finitely generated in many cases. Our results apply to many popular infinite-type surfaces with locally coarsely bounded mapping class groups.
In this note, we prove that the compactly supported mapping class group of a surface containing a genus $3$ subsurface has no realization as a subgroup of the homeomorphism group. We also prove that for certain surfaces with order $6$ symmetries, their mapping class groups have no realization as a subgroup of the homeomorphism group. Examples of such surfaces include the plane minus a Cantor set and the sphere minus a Cantor set.
These notes are the English version of the paper "Hyperbolicité du graphe des rayons et quasi-morphismes sur un gros groupe modulaire". The mapping class group Gamma of the complement of a Cantor set in the plane arises naturally in dynamics. We show that the ray graph, which is the analog of the complex of curves for this surface of infinite type, has infinite diameter and is hyperbolic. We use the action of Gamma on this graph to find an explicit non trivial quasimorphism on Gamma and to show that this group has infinite dimensional second bounded cohomology. Finally we give an example of a …
Following the work of Rosendal and Mann and Rafi, we try to answer the following question: when is the mapping class group of an infinite-type surface quasi-isometric to a graph whose vertices are curves on that surface? With the assumption of tameness as defined by Mann and Rafi, we describe a necessary and sufficient condition, called translatability, for a geometrically nontrivial big mapping class group to admit such a quasi-isometry. In addition, we show that the mapping class group of the plane minus a Cantor set is quasi-isometric to the loop graph defined by Bavard, which we believe re…
We study two actions of big mapping class groups. The first is an action by isometries on a Gromov-hyperbolic graph. The second is an action by homeomorphisms on a circle in which the vertices of the graph naturally embed. The first two parts of the paper are devoted to the definition of objects and tools needed to introduce these two actions; in particular, we define and prove the existence of equators for infinite type surfaces, we define the hyperbolic graph and the circle needed for the actions, and we describe the Gromov-boundary of the graph using the embedding of its vertices in the cir…
We obtain the exact values of the systoles of these hyperbolic surfaces of genus $g$ with cyclic symmetries of the maximum order and the next maximum order. Precisely: for genus $g$ hyperbolic surface with order $4g+2$ cyclic symmetry, the systole is $2\mathrm{arccosh} (1+\cos \fracπ{2g+1}+\cos \frac{2π}{2g+1})$ when $g\ge 7$, and for genus $g$ hyperbolic surface with order $4g$ cyclic symmetry, the systole is $2\mathrm{arccosh} (1+2\cos \fracπ{2g})$ when $g\ge4$.
We provide negative answers to questions posed by Durham, Hagen, and Sisto on the existence of boundary maps for some hierarchically hyperbolic spaces, namely maps from right-angled Artin groups to mapping class groups. We also prove results on existence of boundary maps for free subgroups of mapping class groups.
This is a (very subjective) survey paper for nonspecialists covering group actions on Gromov hyperbolic spaces. The first section is about hyperbolic groups themselves, while the rest of the paper focuses on mapping class groups and $Out(F_n)$, and the way to understand their large scale geometry using their actions on various hyperbolic spaces constructed using projection complexes. This understanding for $Out(F_n)$ significantly lags behind that of mapping class groups and the paper ends with a few open questions.
Let $Σ$ be a complete finite-area orientable hyperbolic surface with one cusp, and let $\mathcal{R}$ be the space of complete geodesic rays in $Σ$ emanating from the puncture. Then there is a natural action of the mapping class group of $Σ$ on $\mathcal{R}$. We show that this action is "almost everywhere" wandering.
We show that if $M$ is a closed three manifold with a Heegaard splitting with sufficiently big "handlebody distance" then the subgroup of the mapping class group of the Heegaard surface, which extend to both handlebodies is finite. As a corollary, this implies that under the same hypothesis, the mapping class group of $M$ is finite.
We show that the closure of the compactly supported mapping class group of an infinite type surface is not perfect and that its abelianization contains a direct summand isomorphic to an uncountable direct sum of rationals. We also extend this to the Torelli group and show that in the case of surfaces with infinite genus the abelianization of the Torelli group contains an indivisible copy of an uncountable free abelian group as well. Finally we give an application to the question of automatic continuity by exhibiting discontinuous homomorphisms to the rationals.
The theme of this survey is that subgroups of the mapping class group of a finite type surface S can be studied via the geometric/dynamical properties of their action on the Thurston compactification of the Teichmuller space of S, just as discrete subgroups of the isometries of hyperbolic space can be studied via their action on compactified hyperbolic space.
We introduce and study the notions of hyperbolically embedded and very rotating families of subgroups. The former notion can be thought of as a generalization of the peripheral structure of a relatively hyperbolic group, while the later one provides a natural framework for developing a geometric version of small cancellation theory. Examples of such families naturally occur in groups acting on hyperbolic spaces including hyperbolic and relatively hyperbolic groups, mapping class groups, $Out(F_n)$, and the Cremona group. Other examples can be found among groups acting geometrically on $CAT(0)$…
In this paper we study the minimum dilatation pseudo-Anosov mapping classes coming from fibrations over the circle of a single 3-manifold, the mapping torus for the "simplest pseudo-Anosov braid". The dilatations that arise include the minimum dilatations for orientable mapping classes for genus g=2,3,4,5,8 as well as Lanneau and Thiffeault's conjectural minima for orientable mapping classes, when g = 2,4 (mod 6). Our examples also show that the minimum dilatation for orientable mapping classes is strictly greater than the minimum dilatation for non-orientable ones when g = 4,6,8.
We consider the class of countable groups possessing an action on a finite product of hyperbolic graphs where every infinite order element acts loxodromically. When the graphs are locally finite, we obtain strong structure theorems for the groups in this subclass, so that mapping class groups of genus at least 3 (and $Aut(F_n)$ and $Out(F_n)$ for $n\geq 4$) are not in this subclass. This contrasts with the general case, where Bestvina, Bromberg and Fujiwara showed the existence of proper actions of mapping class groups on a finite product of quasitrees. In particular these quasitrees cannot be…
We study injective homomorphisms between big mapping class groups of infinite-type surfaces. First, we construct (uncountably many) examples of surfaces without boundary whose (pure) mapping class groups are not co-Hopfian; these are the first examples of injective endomorphisms of mapping class groups (of surfaces with empty boundary) that fail to be surjective. We then prove that, subject to some topological conditions on the domain surface, any continuous injective homomorphism between (arbitrary) big mapping class groups that sends Dehn twists to Dehn twists is induced by homeomorphism. Fi…
In this work, we study the asymptotic geometry of the mapping class group and Teichmueller space. We introduce tools for analyzing the geometry of `projection' maps from these spaces to curve complexes of subsurfaces; from this we obtain information concerning the topology of their asymptotic cones. We deduce several applications of this analysis. One of which is that the asymptotic cone of the mapping class group of any surface is tree-graded in the sense of Drutu and Sapir; this tree-grading has several consequences including answering a question of Drutu and Sapir concerning relatively hype…
We are concerned with mapping class groups of surfaces with nonempty boundary. We present a very natural method, due to Thurston, of finding many different left orderings of such groups. The construction involves equipping the surface with a hyperbolic structure, embedding the universal cover in the hyperbolic plane, and extending the action of the mapping class group on it to its limit points on the circle at infinity. We classify all orderings of braid groups which arise in this way. Moreover, restricting to a certain class of ``nonpathological'' orderings, we prove that there are only finit…
Let $X$ be the space of isometry classes of ordered sextuples of points in the hyperbolic plane such that the product of the six corresponding rotations of angle $π$ is the identity. This space $X$ is closely related to the PSL$_2(\mathbb{R})$-character variety of the genus 2 surface $Σ$. In this article we study the topology and the natural symplectic structure on $X$, and we describe the action of the mapping class group of $Σ$ on $X$. This completes the classification of the ergodic components of the character variety in genus 2 initiated in our previous work.
The invariant measured foliations of a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism induce a natural (singular) Sol structure on mapping tori of surfaces with pseudo-Anosov monodromy. We show that when the pseudo-Anosov $ϕ:S\rightarrow S$ has orientable foliations and does not have 1 as an eigenvalue of the induced cohomology action on the closed surface, then the Sol structure can be deformed to nearby cone hyperbolic structures, in the sense of projective structures. The cone angles can be chosen to be decreasing from multiples of $2π$.
We use our new type of bounded locally homeomorphic quasiregular mappings in the unit 3-ball to address long standing problems for such mappings. The construction of such mappings comes from our construction of non-trivial compact 4-dimensional cobordisms $M$ with symmetric boundary components and whose interiors have complete 4-dimensional real hyperbolic structures. Such bounded locally homeomorphic quasiregular mappings are defined in the unit 3-ball $B^3\subset \mathbb{R}^3$ as mappings equivariant with the standard conformal action of uniform hyperbolic lattices $Γ\subset \operatorname{Is…
The set of equivalence classes of cobounded actions of a group on different hyperbolic metric spaces carries a natural partial order. The resulting poset thus gives rise to a notion of the "best" hyperbolic action of a group as the largest element of this poset, if such an element exists. We call such an action a largest hyperbolic action. While hyperbolic groups admit largest hyperbolic actions, we give evidence in this paper that this phenomenon is rare for non-hyperbolic groups. In particular, we prove that many families of groups of geometric origin do not have largest hyperbolic actions, …
A quasi-tree is a geodesic metric space quasi-isometric to a tree. We give a general construction of many actions of groups on quasi-trees. The groups we can handle include non-elementary (relatively) hyperbolic groups, rank 1 CAT(0) groups, mapping class groups and Out(Fn). As an application, we show that mapping class groups act on finite products of δ-hyperbolic spaces so that orbit maps are quasi-isometric embeddings. We prove that mapping class groups have finite asymptotic dimension.
Let M be a closed hyperbolic three manifold. We construct closed surfaces which map by immersions into M so that for each one the corresponding mapping on the universal covering spaces is an embedding, or, in other words, the corresponding induced mapping on fundamental groups is an injection.
Let $S_{g,n}$ be a surface of genus $g $ with $n$ marked points. Let $X$ be a complete hyperbolic metric on $S_{g,n}$ with $n$ cusps. Every isotopy class $[γ]$ of a closed curve $γ\in π_{1}(S_{g,n})$ contains a unique closed geodesic on $X$. Let $\ell_γ(X)$ denote the hyperbolic length of the geodesic representative of $γ$ on $X$. In this paper, we study the asymptotic growth of the lengths of closed curves of a fixed topological type on $S_{g,n}.$ As an application, one can obtain the asymptotics of the growth of $s^{k}_{X}(L)$, the number of closed curves of length $\leq L$ on $X$ with at mo…
Hierarchically hyperbolic spaces provide a common framework for studying mapping class groups of finite type surfaces, Teichmüller space, right-angled Artin groups, and many other cubical groups. Given such a space $\mathcal X$, we build a bordificationcompatible with the hierarchically hyperbolic structure. If $\mathcal X$ is proper, we get a compactification of $\mathcal X$; we also prove that our construction generalizes the Gromov boundary of a hyperbolic space. In our first main set of applications, we introduce a notion of geometrical finiteness for hierarchically hyperbolic subgroups of…
Let S be a surface and let Mod(S,K) be the mapping class group of S permuting a Cantor subset K of S. We prove two structure theorems for normal subgroups of Mod(S,K). (Purity:) if S has finite type, every normal subgroup of Mod(S,K) either contains the kernel of the forgetful map to the mapping class group of S, or it is `pure', i.e. it fixes the Cantor set pointwise. (Inertia:) for any n element subset Q of the Cantor set, there is a forgetful map from the pure subgroup PMod(S,K) of Mod(S,K) to the mapping class group of (S,Q) fixing Q pointwise. If N is a normal subgroup of Mod(S,K) contain…
