The equivalence class of an Agol cycle is a conjugacy invariant of a pseudo-Anosov map. Mosher defined train tracks in the torus associated to Farey intervals and investigated the relation between the train tracks and the continued fraction expansions of quadratic irrational numbers. We study Mosher's train tracks and describe Agol cycles of all the pseudo-Anosov $3$-braids.
An Agol cycle is a complete invariant of the conjugacy class of a pseudo-Anosov mapping class. We study necessary and sufficient conditions for equivalent Agol cycles of pseudo-Anosov 3-braids.
We prove that generic elements of braid groups are pseudo-Anosov, in the following sense: in the Cayley graph of the braid group with n $\ge$ 3 strands, with respect to Garside's generating set, we prove that the proportion of pseudo-Anosov braids in the ball of radius l tends to 1 exponentially quickly as l tends to infinity. Moreover, with a similar notion of genericity, we prove that for generic pairs of elements of the braid group, the conjugacy search problem can be solved in quadratic time. The idea behind both results is that generic braids can be conjugated "easily" into a rigid braid.
We investigate the relation between the topological entropy of pseudo-Anosov maps on surfaces with punctures and the rank of the first homology of their mapping tori. On the surface $S$ of genus $g$ with $n$ punctures, we show that the entropy of a pseudo-Anosov map is bounded from above by $\dfrac{(k+1)\log(k+3)}{|χ(S)|}$ up to a constant multiple when the rank of the first homology of the mapping torus is $k+1$ and $k, g, n$ satisfy a certain assumption. This is a partial generalization of precedent works of Tsai and Agol-Leininger-Margalit.
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.
Let $b$ be a pseudo-Anosov braid whose permutation has a fixed point and let $M_b$ be the mapping torus by the pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism defined on the genus $0$ fiber $F_b$ associated with $b$. This paper describes a structure of the fibered cone $\mathcal{C}$ of $F$ for $M_b$. We prove that there is a $2$-dimensional subcone $\mathcal{C}_0$ contained in the fibered cone $ \mathcal{C}$ of $F_b$ such that the fiber $F_a$ for each primitive integral class $a \in \mathcal{C}_0$ has genus $0$. We also give a constructive description of the monodromy $ ϕ_a: F_a \rightarrow F_a$ of the fibration …
We prove that, in the $l$-ball of the Cayley graph of the braid group with $n \geqslant 3$ strands, the proportion of rigid pseudo-Anosov braids is bounded below independently of $l$ by a positive value.
We prove that the size of the super summit set of a braid can grow exponentially with the canonical length of the braid, even for pseudo-Anosov braids.
A relation between the dilatation of pseudo-Anosov braids and fixed point theory was studied by Ivanov. In this paper we reveal a new relationship between the above two subjects by showing a formula for the dilatation of pseudo-Anosov braids by means of the representations of braid groups due to B. Jiang and H. Zheng.
There are two objects naturally associated with a braid $β\in B_n$ of pseudo-Anosov type: a (relative) pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism $φ_β\colon S^2\to S^2$; and the finite volume complete hyperbolic structure on the 3-manifold $M_β$ obtained by excising the braid closure of $β$, together with its braid axis, from $S^3$. We show the disconnect between these objects, by exhibiting a family of braids $\{β_q:q\in{\mathbb{Q}}\cap(0,1/3]\}$ with the properties that: on the one hand, there is a fixed homeomorphism $φ_0\colon S^2\to S^2$ to which the (suitably normalized) homeomorphisms $φ_{β_{q}}$ conv…
We show that there is a family of pseudo-Anosov braids independently parameterized by the braid index and the (canonical) length whose smallest conjugacy invariant sets grow exponentially in the braid index and linearly in the length and conclude that the conjugacy problem remains exponential in the braid index under the current knowledge.
We consider a hyperbolic surface bundle over the circle with the smallest known volume among hyperbolic manifolds having 3 cusps, so called "the magic manifold". We compute the entropy function on the fiber face of the unit ball with respect to the Thurston norm, determine homology classes whose representatives are genus 0 fiber surfaces, and describe their monodromies by braids. Among such homology classes whose representatives have n punctures, we decide which one realizes the minimal entropy. It turns out that all the braids with smallest known entropy are derived from monodromies for such …
Thanks to a recent result by Jean-Marc Schlenker, we establish an explicit linear inequality between the normalized entropies of pseudo-Anosov automorphisms and the hyperbolic volumes of their mapping tori. As its corollaries, we give an improved lower bound for values of entropies of pseudo-Anosovs on a surface with fixed topology, and a proof of a slightly weaker version of the result by Farb, Leininger and Margalit first, and by Agol later, on finiteness of cusped manifolds generating surface automorphisms with small normalized entropies. Also, we present an analogous linear inequality betw…
Periodic solutions of the planar $N$-body problem determine braids through the trajectory of $N$ bodies. Braid types can be used to classify periodic solutions. According to the Nielsen-Thurston classification of surface automorphisms, braids fall into three types: periodic, reducible and pseudo-Anosov. To a braid of pseudo-Anosov type, there is an associated stretch factor greater than 1, and this is a conjugacy invariant of braids. In 2006, the third author discovered a family of multiple choreographic solutions of the planar $2n$-body problem. We prove that braids obtained from the solution…
We find the minimum dilatation of pseudo-Anosov braids on n-punctured discs for 3 <= n <= 8. This covers the results of Song-Ko-Los (n=4) and Ham-Song (n=5). The proof is elementary, and uses the Lefschetz formula.
We study the minimal dilatation of pseudo-Anosov pure surface braids and provide upper and lower bounds as a function of genus and the number of punctures. For a fixed number of punctures, these bounds tend to infinity as the genus does. We also bound the dilatation of pseudo-Anosov pure surface braids away from zero and give a constant upper bound in the case of a sufficient number of punctures.
In this thesis we describe how to estimate the distance spanned in the pants graph by a train track splitting sequence on a surface, up to multiplicative and additive constants. If some moderate assumptions on a splitting sequence are satisfied, each vertex set of a train track in it will represent a vertex of a graph which is naturally quasi-isometric to the pants graph; moreover the splitting sequence gives an edge-path in this graph so, more precisely, our distance estimate holds between the extreme points of this path. The present distance estimate is inspired by a result of Masur, Mosher …
