The level $2$ mapping class group of an orientable closed surface can be generated by squares of Dehn twists about non-separating curves. On the other hand, the level $2$ mapping class group $\mathcal{M}_2(N_g)$ of a non-orientable closed surface $N_g$ can not be generated by only Dehn twists, and so it can not be generated by squares of Dehn twists about non-separating curves. In this paper, we prove that the Dehn twist subgroup of $\mathcal{M}_2(N_g)$ can not be generated by squares of Dehn twists about non-separating curves either. As an application, we give a finite generating set for the subgroup of $\mathcal{M}_2(N_g)$ generated by Dehn twist about separating curves and squares of Dehn twists about non-separating curves. Moreover, we examine about actions on non-separating simple closed curves of $N_g$ by $\mathcal{M}_2(N_g)$.
We give a small generating set for the twist subgroup of the mapping class group of a non-orientable surface by Dehn twists. The difference between the number of the generators and a lower bound of numbers of generators for the twist subgroup by Dehn twists is one. The lower bounds is obtained from an argument of Hirose [5].
We introduce a Lie algebra associated with a non-orientable surface, which is an analogue for the Goldman Lie algebra of an oriented surface. As an application, we deduce an explicit formula of the Dehn twist along an annulus simple closed curve on the surface as in Kawazumi-Kuno and Masseyeau-Turaev.
We give new upper bounds on the stable commutator lengths of Dehn twists along separating curves in the mapping class group of a closed oriented surface. The estimates of these upper bounds are $O(1/g)$, where $g$ is the genus of the surface.
Let $N_g$ be the non-orientable surface with genus $g$, $\text{MCG}(N_g)$ be the mapping class group of $N_g$, $\mathcal{T}(N_g)$ be the index 2 subgroup generated by all Dehn twists of $\text{MCG}(N_g)$. We prove that for odd genus, $\mathcal{T}(N_g)$ can be generated by three elements of finite orders.
We give an infinite presentation for the mapping class group of a non-orientable surface. The generating set consists of all Dehn twists and all crosscap pushing maps along simple loops.
A filling Dehn sphere $Σ$ in a closed 3-manifold $M$ is a sphere transversely immersed in $M$ that defines a cell decomposition of $M$. Every closed 3-manifold has a filling Dehn sphere. The Montesinos complexity of a $3$-manifold $M$ is defined as the minimal number of triple points among all the filling Dehn spheres of $M$. A sharp upper bound for the Montesinos complexity of the connected sum of two 3-manifolds is given.
When can surgery on a null-homologous knot K in a rational homology sphere produce a non-separating sphere? We use Heegaard Floer homology to give sufficient conditions for K to be unknotted. We also discuss some applications to homology cobordism, concordance, and Mazur manifolds.
A finite presentation for the subgroup of the mapping class group of a compact non-orientable surface generated by all Dehn twists was given by Stukow. In this paper, we give an infinite presentation for this group, mainly using the presentation given by Stukow and Birman exact sequences on mapping class groups of non-orientable surfaces.
The triple point numbers and the triple point spectrum of a closed 3-manifold were defined in (R. Vigara, Representación de 3-variedades por esferas de Dehn rellenantes, PhD Thesis, UNED 2006). They are topological invariants that give a measure of the complexity of a 3-manifold using the number of triple points of minimal filling Dehn surfaces. Basic properties of these invariants are presented, and the triple point spectra of $\mathbb{S}^2\times \mathbb{S}^1$ and $\mathbb{S}^3$ are computed.
Given a 3-holed sphere decomposition of an orientable closed surface, it is shown that each orientation preserving homeomorphism of the surface is isotopic to a composition AB where A is a product of positive Dehn twists and B is a product of negative Dehn twists on the decomposition curves.
We obtain a finite generating set for the level 2 twist subgroup of the mapping class group of a closed non-orientable surface. The generating set consists of crosscap pushing maps along non-separating two-sided simple loops and squares of Dehn twists along non-separating two-sided simple closed curves. We also prove that the level 2 twist subgroup is normally generated in the mapping class group by a crosscap pushing map along a non-separating two-sided simple loop for genus $g\geq 5$ and $g=3$. As an application, we calculate the first homology group of the level 2 twist subgroup for genus $…
In order to obtain a closed orientable convex projective four-manifold with small positive Euler characteristic, we build an explicit example of convex projective Dehn filling of a cusped hyperbolic four-manifold through a continuous path of projective cone-manifolds.
Let $N_g^k$ be a nonorientable surface of genus \ $g\geq 5$ \ with \ $k$-punctures. In this note, we will give an algebraic characterization of a Dehn twist about a simple closed curve on $N_g^k$. Along the way, we will fill some little gaps in the proofs of some theorems in \cite{A} and \cite{I1} giving algebraic characterizations of Dehn twists about separating simple closed curves. Indeed, our results will give an algebraic characterization for the topological type of Dehn twists about separating simple closed curves.
Let $\text{Mod}(S_g)$ be the mapping class group of the closed orientable surface $S_g$ of genus $g \geq 1$. 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 $g\geq 2$, whose product is pseudo-Anosov.
In this paper we investigate the distances between Dehn fillings on a hyperbolic 3-manifold that yield 3-manifolds containing essential small surfaces including non-orientable surfaces. Especially we study the situations where one filling creates an essential sphere or projective plane, and the other creates an essential sphere, projective plane, annulus, Moebius band, torus or Klein bottle,all 11 pairs of such non-hyperbolic manifolds.
Let a and b be two simple closed curves on an orientable surface S such that their geometric intersection number is greater than 1. It is known that the group generated by corresponding Dehn twists t_a and t_b is isomorphic to the free group of rank 2. In this paper we extend this result to the case of a nonorientable surface.
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.
By considering non-orientable surfaces in the surgered manifolds, we show that the 10/3- and -10/3-Dehn surgeries on the 2-bridge knot $9_{27} = S(49,19)$ are not cosmetic, i.e., they give mutually non-homeomorphic manifolds. The knot is unknown to have no cosmetic surgeries by previously known results; in particular, by using the Casson invariant and the Heegaard Floer homology.
Let $C$ be a curve in a closed orientable surface $F$ of genus $g \geq 2$ that separates $F$ into subsurfaces $\widetilde {F_i}$ of genera $g_i$, for $i = 1,2$. We study the set of roots in $\Mod(F)$ of the Dehn twist $t_C$ about $C$. All roots arise from pairs of $C_{n_i}$-actions on the $\widetilde{F_i}$, where $n=\lcm(n_1,n_2)$ is the degree of the root, that satisfy a certain compatibility condition. The $C_{n_i}$ actions are of a kind that we call nestled actions, and we classify them using tuples that we call data sets. The compatibility condition can be expressed by a simple formula, al…
Wajnryb proved 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.
We characterise when a set of simple closed curves in an orientable surface forms a bouquet, in terms of relations between the corresponding Dehn twists.
A \textit{multicurve} $\C$ on a closed orientable surface is defined to be a finite collection of disjoint non-isotopic essential simple closed curves. The Dehn twist $t_{\C}$ about $\C$ is the product of the Dehn twists about the individual curves. In this paper, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a root of such a Dehn twist, that is, a homeomorphism $h$ such that $h^n = t_{\C}$. We give combinatorial data that corresponds to such roots, and use it to determine upper bounds for $n$. Finally, we classify all such roots up to conjugacy for surfaces of genus 3 and 4…
Consider the exterior M of a hyperbolic knot lying in a closed, connected, orientable 3-manifold. Culler and Shalen defined norm on H_1(dM;R) using the SL(2,C) character variety of pi_1(M). The Culler-Shalen norm encodes many topological properties of M; in particular it provides information about Dehn fillings of M. Their construction may be applied to arbitrary curves in the SL_2(C)-character variety of a connected, compact, orientable, irreducible 3-manifold whose boundary is a torus, though in this generality one can only guarantee that it will define a seminorm. The first half of this pap…
Let $N_{g}$ denote the closed non-orientable surface of genus $g$ and let ${\mathcal M} _g$ denote the mapping class group of $N_{g}$. Let ${\mathcal T} _g$ denote the twist subgroup of ${\mathcal M} _g$ which is the subgroup of ${\mathcal M} _g$ is generated by all Dehn twists. In this thesis, we proved that ${\mathcal T} _g$ is generated by six involutions for $g \geq 16$ or $g = 14$.
Margalit and Schleimer observed that Dehn twists on orientable surfaces have nontrivial roots. We investigate the problem of roots of a Dehn twist t_c about a nonseparating circle c in the mapping class group M(N_g) of a nonorientable surface N_g of genus g. We explore the existence of roots and, following the work of McCullough, Rajeevsarathy and Monden, give a simple arithmetic description of their conjugacy classes. We also study roots of maximal degree and prove that if we fix an odd integer n>1, then for each sufficiently large g, t_c has a root of degree n in M(N_g). Moreover, for any po…
A homeomorphism of a 3-manifold M is said to be Dehn twists on the boundary when its restriction to the boundary of M is isotopic to the identity on the complement of a collection of disjoint simple closed curves in the boundary of M. In this paper, we give various results about such collections of curves and the associated homeomorphisms. In particular, if M is compact, orientable, irreducible and the boundary of M is a single torus, and M admits a homeomorphism which is a nontrivial Dehn twist on the boundary of M, then M must be a solid torus.
We give new upper bounds on the stable commutator lengths of Dehn twists in mapping class groups and new lower bounds on the stable commutator lengths of Dehn twists in hyperelliptic mapping class groups. In particular, we show that the stable commutator lengths of Dehn twists about a nonseparating and a separating curve on an oriented closed surface of genus 2 are not equal to each other.
D. Margalit and S. Schleimer found examples of roots of the Dehn twist about a nonseparating curve in a closed orientable surface, that is, homeomorphisms whose nth power is isotopic to the Dehn twist. Our main theorem gives elementary number-theoretic conditions that describe the values of n for which an nth root exists, given the genus of the surface. Among its applications, we show that n must be odd, that the Margalit-Schleimer roots achieve the maximum value of n among the roots for a given genus, and that for a given odd n, nth roots exist for all genera greater than (n-2)(n-1)/2. We als…
We compute the automorphism groups of the Torelli complex and the complex of separating curves for all but finitely many compact orientable surfaces. As an application, we show that the abstract commensurators of the Torelli group and the Johnson kernel for such surfaces are naturally isomorphic to the extended mapping class group.
If a closed, orientable hyperbolic 3--manifold M has volume at most 1.22 then H_1(M;Z_p) has dimension at most 2 for every prime p not 2 or 7, and H_1(M;Z_2) and H_1(M;Z_7) have dimension at most 3. The proof combines several deep results about hyperbolic 3--manifolds. The strategy is to compare the volume of a tube about a shortest closed geodesic C in M with the volumes of tubes about short closed geodesics in a sequence of hyperbolic manifolds obtained from M by Dehn surgeries on C.
We construct several families of embeddings of braid groups into mapping class groups of orientable and non-orientable surfaces and prove that they induce the trivial map in stable homology in the orientable case, but not so in the non-orientable case. We show that these embeddings are non-geometric in the sense that the standard generators of the braid group are not mapped to Dehn twists.
Let M be a compact, orientable, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold with boundary an incompressible torus. Techniques based on the characteristic submanifold theory are used to bound the intersection number of two slopes αand βon the boundary of M. The method applies when βis the boundary slope of an essential surface F that is not a semi-fiber (i.e. F is not a fiber and does not split M into two twisted I-bundles), and the Dehn filling M(α) contains a suitable singular surface. One of the main results is that if F is planar and if the fundamental group of M(α) does not contain a non-abelian fre…
Dehn quandles of surfaces and their bounded cohomology
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali（印度科学教育与研究学院（IISER）莫哈利分校）；Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Tirupati（印度科学教育与研究学院（IISER）蒂鲁帕蒂分校）
Let K' be a hyperbolic knot in S^3 and suppose that some Dehn surgery on K' with distance at least 3 from the meridian yields a 3-manifold M of Heegaard genus 2. We show that if M does not contain an embedded Dyck's surface (the closed non-orientable surface of Euler characteristic -1), then the knot dual to the surgery is either 0-bridge or 1-bridge with respect to a genus 2 Heegaard splitting of M. In the case M does contain an embedded Dyck's surface, we obtain similar results. As a corollary, if M does not contain an incompressible genus 2 surface, then the tunnel number of K' is at most 2…
We provide analogues for non-orientable surfaces with or without boundary or punctures of several basic theorems in the setting of the Thurston theory of surfaces which were developed so far only in the case of orientable surfaces. Namely, we provide natural analogues for non-orientable surfaces of the Fenchel-Nielsen theorem on the parametrization of the Teichmüller space of the surface, the Dehn-Thurston theorem on the parametrization of measured foliations in the surface, and the Hatcher-Thurston theorem, which gives a complete minimal set of moves between pair of pants decompositions of th…
We show that for all but finitely many compact orientable surfaces, any superinjective map from the complex of separating curves into the Torelli complex is induced by an element of the extended mapping class group. As an application, we prove that any injective homomorphism from a finite index subgroup of the Johnson kernel into the Torelli group for such a surface is induced by an element of the extended mapping class group.
Let t_a be the Dehn twist about a circle a on an orientable surface. It is well known that for each circle b and an integer n, I(t_a^n(b),b)=|n|I(a,b)^2, where I(,) is the geometric intersection number. We prove a similar formula for circles on nonorientable surfaces. As a corollary we prove some algebraic properties of twists on nonorientable surfaces. We also prove that if M(N) is the mapping class group of a nonorientable surface N, then up to a finite number of exceptions, the centraliser of the subgroup of M(N) generated by the twists is equal to the centre of M(N) and is generated by twi…
If a 3--manifold $Y$ contains a non-separating sphere, then some twisted Heegaard Floer homology of $Y$ is zero. This simple fact allows us to prove several results about Dehn surgery on knots in such manifolds. Similar results have been proved for knots in $L$--spaces.
The Magnus representation of the Torelli subgroup of the mapping class group of a surface is a homomorphism r: I_{g,1} -> GL_{2g}(Z[H]). Here H is the first homology group of the surface. This representation is not faithful; in particular, Suzuki previously described precisely when the commutator of two Dehn twists about separating curves is in the kernel of r. Using the trace of the Magnus representation, we apply a new method of showing that two endomorphisms generate a free group to prove that the images of two positive separating multitwists under the Magnus representation either commute o…
We show that Szepietowski's system of generators for the mapping class group of a non-orientable surface is a minimal generating set by Dehn twists and $Y$-homemorphisms.
We study the existence of incompressible embeddings of surfaces into the genus two handlebody. We show that for every compact surface with boundary, orientable or not, there is an incompressible embedding of the surface into the genus two handlebody. In the orientable case the embedding can be either separating or non-separating. We also consider the case in which the genus two handlebody is replaced by an orientable 3-manifold with a compressible boundary component of genus greater than or equal to two.
We prove that the separating curve graph of a connected, compact, orientable surface with genus at least 3 and a single boundary component is not relatively hyperbolic. This completes the classification of when the separating curve graph is hyperbolic and relatively hyperbolic initiated by previous works of the authors.
In this paper, we give an algorithm to build all compact orientable atoroidal Haken 3-manifolds with tori boundary or closed orientable Haken 3-manifolds, so that in both cases, there are embedded closed orientable separating incompressible surfaces which are not tori. Next, such incompressible surfaces are related to Heegaard splittings. For simplicity, we focus on the case of separating incompressible surfaces, since non-separating ones have been extensively studied. After putting the surfaces into Morse position relative to the height function associated to the Heegaard splittings, a thin p…
Let $S_g$ be a closed orientable surface of genus $g \geq 2$ and $C$ a simple closed nonseparating curve in $F$. Let $t_C$ denote a left handed Dehn twist about $C$. A \textit{fractional power} of $t_C$ of \textit{exponent} $\fraction{\ell}{n}$ is an $h \in \Mod(S_g)$ such that $h^n = t_C^{\ell}$. Unlike a root of a $t_C$, a fractional power $h$ can exchange the sides of $C$. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of both side-exchanging and side-preserving fractional powers. We show in the side-preserving case that if $\gcd(\ell,n) = 1$, then $h$ will be isotopic to t…
This paper concerns the set $\hat{\mathcal{M}}$ of pseudo-Anosovs which occur as monodromies of fibrations on manifolds obtained from the magic 3-manifold $N$ by Dehn filling three cusps with a mild restriction. We prove that for each $g$ (resp. $g \not\equiv 0 \pmod{6}$), the minimum among dilatations of elements (resp. elements with orientable invariant foliations) of $\hat{\mathcal{M}}$ defined on a closed surface $\varSigma_g$ of genus $g$ is achieved by the monodromy of some $\varSigma_g$-bundle over the circle obtained from $N(\tfrac{3}{-2})$ or $N(\tfrac{1}{-2})$ by Dehn filling two cus…
It is well-known that any pair of closed orientable 3-manifolds are related by a finite sequence of Dehn surgeries on knots. Furthermore Kawauchi showed that such knots can be taken to be hyperbolic. In this article, we consider the minimal length of such sequences connecting a pair of 3-manifolds, in particular, a pair of lens spaces.
This paper gives a proof that the fundamental group of a class of closed orientable 3-manifolds constructed from three injective handlebodies has a solvable word problem. This is done by giving an algorithm to decide if a closed curve in the manifold is null-homotopic. Non-Haken and non-Seifert fibered examples are constructed by performing Dehn surgery on a class of two-bridge knots.
