Lei and Wu have given a description of the second homotopy group of a closed orientable 3-manifold in terms of the kernels of the epimorphisms from the fundamental group of a Heegaard splitting surface onto the fundamental groups of the two handlebody sides. In this note, we give a geometric derivation of this result and collect some observations about the relation between the various groups and the topology of the 3-manifold and the Heegaard splitting.
Kawauchi defined a group structure on the set of homology $S^1$$\times$$S^2$'s under an equivalence relation called $\widetilde{H}$-cobordism. This group receives a homomorphism from the knot concordance group, given by the operation of zero-surgery. It is natural to ask whether the zero-surgery homomorphism is injective. We show that this question has a negative answer in the smooth category. Indeed, using knot concordance invariants derived from knot Floer homology we show that the kernel of the zero-surgery homomorphism contains a $\mathbb{Z}^\infty$-subgroup.
The Johnson kernel is the subgroup of the mapping class group of a surface generated by Dehn twists along bounding simple closed curves, and has the second Johnson homomorphism as a free abelian quotient. In terms of the representation theory of the symplectic group, we give a complete description of cup products of two classes in the first rational cohomology of the Johnson kernel obtained by the rational dual of the second Johnson homomorphism.
We construct infinitely many linearly independent quasi-homomorphisms on the mapping class group of a Riemann surface with genus at least two which vanish on a handlebody subgroup. As a corollary, we disprove a conjecture of Reznikov on bounded width in Heegaard splittings. Another corollary is that there are infinitely many linearly independent quasi-invariants on the Heegaard splittings of three-manifolds.
This paper gives an algebraic conjecture which is shown to be equivalent to Thurston's Geometrization Conjecture for closed, orientable 3-manifolds. It generalizes the Stallings-Jaco theorem which established a similar result for the Poincare Conjecture. The paper also gives two other algebraic conjectures; one is equivalent to the finite fundamental group case of the Geometrization Conjecture, and the other is equivalent to the union of the Geometrization Conjecture and Thurston's Virtual Bundle Conjecture.
We give a new proof of a celebrated theorem of Dennis Johnson that asserts that the kernel of the Johnson homomorphism on the Torelli subgroup of the mapping class group is generated by separating twists. In fact, we prove a more general result that also applies to "subsurface Torelli groups". Using this, we extend Johnson's calculation of the rational abelianization of the Torelli group not only to the subsurface Torelli groups, but also to finite-index subgroups of the Torelli group that contain the kernel of the Johnson homomorphism.
We study the stated skein modules of marked 3-manifolds. We generalize the splitting homomorphism for stated skein algebras of surfaces to a splitting homomorphism for stated skein modules of 3-manifolds. We show that there exists a Chebyshev-Frobenius homomorphism for the stated skein modules of 3-manifolds which extends the Chebyshev homomorphism of the skein algebras of unmarked surfaces originally constructed by Bonahon and Wong. Additionally, we show that the Chebyshev-Frobenius map commutes with the splitting homomorphism. This is then used to show that in the case of the stated skein al…
The Johnson filtration of the mapping class group of a compact, oriented surface is the descending series consisting of the kernels of the actions on the nilpotent quotients of the fundamental group of the surface. Each term of the Johnson filtration admits a Johnson homomorphism, whose kernel is the next term in the filtration. In this paper, we consider a general situation where a group acts on a group with a filtration called an "extended N-series". We develop a theory of Johnson homomorphisms in this general setting, including many known variants of the original Johnson homomorphisms as we…
We prove that either the images of the mapping class groups by quantum representations are not isomorphic to higher rank lattices or else the kernels have a large number of normal generators. Further we show that the images of the mapping class groups have nontrivial 2-cohomology, at least for small levels. For this purpose we considered a series of quasi-homomorphisms on mapping class groups extending previous work of Barge and Ghys and of Gambaudo and Ghys. These quasi-homomorphisms are pull-backs of the Dupont-Guichardet-Wigner quasi-homomorphisms on pseudo-unitary groups along quantum repr…
We consider two mod-p central series of the free group given by Stallings and Zassenhaus. Applying these series to definitions of Dennis Johnson's filtration of the mapping class group we obtain two mod-p Johnson filtrations. Further, we adapt the definition of the Johnson homomorphisms to obtain mod-p Johnson homomorphisms. We calculate the image of the first of these homomorphisms. We give generators for the kernels of these homomorphisms as well. We restrict the range of our mod-p Johnson homomorphisms using work of Morita. We finally prove the announced result of Perron that a rational hom…
Let K be the kernel of an epimorphism G -> Z, where G is a finitely presented group. If K has infinitely many subgroups of index 2, 3, or 4, then it has uncountably many. Moreover, if K is the commutator subgroup of a classical knot group G, then any homomorphism from K onto the symmetric group S_2 lifts to a homomorphism onto S_3, and any homomorphism from K onto Z_3 lifts to a homomorphism onto the alternating group A_4.
We apply mapping class group techniques and trisections to study intersection forms of smooth 4-manifolds. Johnson defined a well-known homomorphism from the Torelli group of a compact surface. Morita later showed that every homology 3-sphere can be obtained from the standard Heegaard decomposition of $S^3$ by regluing according to a map in the kernel of this homomorphism. We prove an analogous result for trisections of 4-manifolds. Specifically, if $X$ and $Y$ admit handle decompositions without 1- or 3-handles and have isomorphic intersection forms, then a trisection of $Y$ can be obtained f…
Let $F_g$ denote the closed orientable surface of genus $g$. What is the least order finite group, $G_g$, for which there is a homomorphism $ψ$ from $π_1(F_g)$ to $G_g$ so that no nontrivial simple closed curve on $F_g$ represents an element in Ker($ψ$)? For the torus it is easily seen that $G_1 = Z_2 \times Z_2$ suffices. We prove here that $G_2$ is a group of order 32 and that an upper bound for the order of $G_g$ is given by $g^{2g +1}$. The previously known upper bound was greater than $2^{g{2^{2g}}}$.
We study two homomorphisms to the rational homology sphere group. If $ψ$ denotes the inclusion homomorphism from the integral homology sphere group, then using work of Lisca we show that the image of $ψ$ intersects trivially with the subgroup of the rational homology sphere group generated by lens spaces. As corollaries this gives a new proof that the cokernel of $ψ$ is infinitely generated, and implies that a connected sum $K$ of 2-bridge knots is concordant to a knot with determinant 1 if and only if $K$ is smoothly slice. Furthermore, if $β$ denotes the homomorphism from the knot concordanc…
For all n > 0 there is a homomorphism from the smooth concordance group of knots in dimension 2n + 1 to an algebraically defined group called the rational algebraic concordance group. This algebraic concordance group splits as a direct sum of groups indexed by polynomials. For n > 1 the homomorphism is injective. This leads to what is called a primary decomposition theorem for knot concordance. In the classical dimension, the kernel of this homomorphism includes the smooth concordance group of topologically slice knots, and Jae Choon Cha has begun studying possible primary decompositions of th…
We study the geometry of infinitely presented groups satisfying the small cancelation condition C'(1/8), and define a standard decomposition (called the criss-cross decomposition) for the elements of such groups. We use it to prove the Rapid Decay property for groups with the stronger small cancelation property C'(1/10). As a consequence, the Metric Approximation Property holds for the reduced C*-algebra and for the Fourier algebra of such groups. Our method further implies that the kernel of the comparison map between the bounded and the usual group cohomology in degree 2 has a basis of power…
Consider the kernel Mag_g of the Magnus representation of the Torelli group and the kernel Bur_n of the Burau representation of the braid group. We prove that for g >= 2 and for n >= 6 the groups Mag_g and Bur_n have infinite rank first homology. As a consequence we conclude that neither group has any finite generating set. The method of proof in each case consists of producing a kind of "Johnson-type" homomorphism to an infinite rank abelian group, and proving the image has infinite rank. For the case of Bur_n, we do this with the assistance of a computer calculation.
We construct an action of the braid group B_{2g+2} on the free group F_{2g} extending an action of B_4 on F_2 introduced earlier by Reutenauer and the author. Our action induces a homomorphism from B_{2g+2} into the symplectic modular group Sp_{2g}(Z). In the special case g=2 we show that the latter homomorphism is surjective and determine its kernel, thus obtaining a braid-like presentation of Sp_4(Z).
In this paper we study the kernel of the homomorphism $B_{g,n} \to B_n$ of the braid group $B_{g,n}$ in the handlebody $\mathcal{H}_g$ to the braid group $B_n$. We prove that this kernel is a semi-direct product of free groups. Also, we introduce an algebra $H_{g,n}(q)$, which is some analog of the Hecke algebra $H_n(q)$, constructed by the braid group $B_n$.
Let $n,m\in \mathbb{N}$, and let $B_{n,m}(\mathbb{R}P^2)$ be the set of $(n + m)$-braids of the projective plane whose associated permutation lies in the subgroup $S_n\times S_m$ of the symmetric group $S_{n+m}$. We study the splitting problem of the following generalisation of the Fadell-Neuwirth short exact sequence: $$1\rightarrow B_m(\mathbb{R}P^2 \setminus \{x_1,\dots,x_n\})\rightarrow B_{n,m}(\mathbb{R}P^2)\xrightarrow{\bar{q}} B_n(\mathbb{R}P^2)\rightarrow 1,$$ where the map $\bar{q}$ can be considered geometrically as the epimorphism that forgets the last $m$ strands, as well as the ex…
The Torelli group, I(S_g), is the subgroup of the mapping class group consisting of elements that act trivially on the homology of the surface. There are three types of elements that naturally arise in studying I(S_g): bounding pair maps, separating twists, and simply intersecting pair maps (SIP-maps). Historically the first two types of elements have been the focus of the literature on I(S_g), while SIP-maps have received relatively little attention until recently, due to an infinite presentation of I(S_g) introduced by Andrew Putman that uses all three types of elements. We will give a topol…
We first develop a general theory of Johnson filtrations and Johnson homomorphisms for a group $G$ acting on another group $K$ equipped with a filtration indexed by a "good" ordered commutative monoid. Then, specializing it to the case where the monoid is the additive monoid $\mathbb{N}^2$ of pairs on nonnegative integers, we obtain a theory of double Johnson filtrations and homomorphisms. We apply this theory to the mapping class group $\mathcal{M}$ of a surface $Σ_{g,1}$ with one boundary component, equipped with the normal subgroups $\bar{X}$, $\bar{Y}$ of $π_1(Σ_{g,1})$ associated to a sta…
Johnson's characterization of amenable groups states that a discrete group $Γ$ is amenable if and only if $H_b^{n \geq 1}(Γ; V) = 0$ for all dual normed $\mathbb{R}[Γ]$-modules V. In this paper, we extend the previous result to homomorphisms by proving the converse of the Mapping Theorem: a surjective group homomorphism $ϕ\colon Γ\to K$ has amenable kernel H if and only if the induced inflation map $H^\bullet_b(K; V^H) \to H^\bullet_b(Γ; V)$ is an isometric isomorphism for every dual normed $\mathbb{R}[Γ]$-module V. In addition, we obtain an analogous characterization for the (smaller) class o…
