Let S be the boundary of a handlebody M. We prove that the set of curves in S that are boundaries of disks in M, considered as a subset of the complex of curves of S, is quasi-convex.
We give a proof that there exists a universal constant $K$ such that the disc graph associated to a surface $S$ forming a boundary component of a compact, orientable 3-manifold $M$ is $K$-quasiconvex in the curve graph of $S$. Our proof does not require the use of train tracks.
Let $S_{g,p}$ denote the genus $g$ orientable surface with $p$ punctures. We show that nested train track sequences constitute $O((g,p)^{2})$-quasiconvex subsets of the curve graph, effectivizing a theorem of Masur and Minsky. As a consequence, the genus $g$ disk set is $O(g^{2})$-quasiconvex. We also show that splitting and sliding sequences of birecurrent train tracks project to $O((g,p)^{2})$-unparameterized quasi-geodesics in the curve graph of any essential subsurface, an effective version of a theorem of Masur, Mosher, and Schleimer.
Let $1 \to K \longrightarrow G \stackrelπ\longrightarrow Q$ be an exact sequence of hyperbolic groups. Let $Q_1 < Q$ be a quasiconvex subgroup and let $G_1=π^{-1}(Q_1)$. Under relatively mild conditions (e.g. if $K$ is a closed surface group or a free group and $Q$ is convex cocompact), we show that infinite index quasiconvex subgroups of $G_1$ are quasiconvex in $G$. Related results are proven for metric bundles, developable complexes of groups, and graphs of groups.
Any quasi-isometry of the complex of curves is bounded distance from a simplicial automorphism. As a consequence, the quasi-isometry type of the curve complex determines the homeomorphism type of the surface.
A rigid set in a curve complex of a surface is a subcomplex such that every locally injective simplicial map from the set into the curve complex is induced by a homeomorphism of the surface. In this paper, we find finite rigid sets in the curve complexes of connected non-orientable surfaces of genus $g$ with $n$ holes for $g+n \neq 4$.
For each closed surface of genus $g\ge3$, we find a finite subcomplex of the separating curve complex that is rigid with respect to incidence-preserving maps.
Using the Birmanexact sequence for pure mapping class groups, we construct a universal Cannon--Thurston map onto the boundary of a curve complex for a surface with punctures we call surviving curve complex. Along the way we prove hyperbolicity of this complex and identify its boundary as a space of laminations. As a corollary we obtain a universal Cannon--Thurston map to the boundary of the ordinary curve complex, extending earlier work of the second author with Mj and Schleimer.
We prove an effective version of a theorem relating curve complex distance to electric distance in hyperbolic 3-manifolds, up to errors that are polynomial in the complexity of the underlying surface. We use this to give an effective proof of a result regarding maps between curve complexes of surfaces induced by finite covers. As applications, we effectively relate the electric circumference of a fibered manifold to the curve complex translation length of its monodromy, and we give quantitative bounds on virtual specialness for cube complexes dual to curves on surfaces.
We show that a random walk on the mapping class group of an orientable surface of finite type makes linear progress in the relative metric, which is quasi-isometric to the complex of curves.
This goal of the paper is to show that the automorphisms of the complex of curves in a surface are induced by the self-homeomorphisms of the surface except the surface is the 2-holed torus.
In this survey paper we give a proof of hyperbolicity of the complex of curves for a non-exceptional surface S of finite type combining ideas of Masur/Minsky and Bowditch. We also shortly discuss the relation between the geometry of the complex of curves and the geometry of Teichmueller space.
Rafi and Schleimer recently proved that the natural relation between curve complexes induced by a covering map between two surfaces is a quasi-isometric embedding. We offer another proof of this result using a distance estimate via hyperbolic 3-manifolds.
Let $S$ be a connected orientable surface of finite topological type. We prove that there is an exhaustion of the curve complex $\mathcal{C}(S)$ by a sequence of finite rigid sets.
By the work of Harer, the reduced homology of the complex of curves is a fundamental cohomological object associated to all torsion free finite index subgroups of the mapping class group. We call this homology group the Steinberg module of the mapping class group. It was previously known that the curve complex has the homotopy type of a bouquet of spheres. Here, we give the first explicit homologically nontrivial sphere in the curve complex and show that under the action of the mapping class group, the orbit of this homology class generates the reduced homology of the curve complex.
Let $S$ be a closed Riemann surface of genus $p>1$ with one point removed. In this paper, we identify those point-pushing pseudo-Anosov maps on $S$ that preserve at least one bi-infinite geodesic in the curve complex.
We show that if the monodromy of a 3-manifold M that fibers over the circle has large translation distance in the curve complex, then the rank of the fundamental group of M is 2g+1, where g is the genus of the fiber.
A proof that the separating curve complex of the closed genus two surface has a quasi-distance formula and is delta hyperbolic using tools of Masur and Schleimer. This answers in the affirmative a Conjecture of Schleimer.
We consider three kinds of quotients of the curve complex which are obtained by coning off uniformly quasi-convex subspaces: symmetric curve sets, non-maximal train track sets, and compression body disc sets. We show that the actions of the mapping class group on those quotients are strongly WPD, which implies that the actions are non-elementary and those quotients are of infinite diameter.
We provide the first non-trivial examples of quasi-isometric embeddings between curve complexes. These are induced either by puncturing a closed surface or via orbifold coverings. As a corollary, we give new quasi-isometric embeddings between mapping class groups.
Let $N$ be a connected nonorientable surface of genus $g$ with $n$ punctures. Suppose that $g$ is odd and $g+n \geqslant 6$. We prove that the automorphism group of the complex of curves of $N$ is isomorphic to the mapping class group $\mathcal M_{N}$ of $N$.
Let $P : Σ\rightarrow S$ be a finite degree covering map between surfaces. Rafi and Schleimer show that there is an induced quasi-isometric embedding $Π: \mathcal{C}(S) \rightarrow \mathcal{C}(Σ)$ between the associated curve complexes. We define an operation on curves in $\mathcal{C}(Σ)$ using minimal intersection number conditions and prove that it approximates a nearest point projection to $Π(\mathcal{C}(S))$. We also approximate hulls of finite sets of vertices in the curve complex, together with their corresponding nearest point projections, using intersection numbers.
We show that when the genus and punctures of a surface are directly proportional by some rational number the minimal asymptotic translation length in the curve complex has behavior inverse to the square of the Euler characteristic. We also show that when the genus is fixed and the number of punctures varies the behavior is inverse to the Euler characteristic.
We show that there are hyperbolic tunnel-number one knots with arbitrarily high bridge number and that "most" tunnel-number one knots are not one-bridge with respect to an unknotted torus. The proof relies on a connection between bridge number and a certain distance in the curve complex of a genus-two surface.
We study the action of the mapping class group M(F) on the complex of curves of a non-orientable surface F. We obtain, by using a result of K. S. Brown, a presentation for M(F) defined in terms of the mapping class groups of the complementary surfaces of collections of curves, provided that F is not sporadic, i.e. the complex of curves of F is simply connected. We also compute a finite presentation for the mapping class group of each sporadic surface.
Let $N$ be a compact, connected, nonorientable surface of genus $g$ with $n$ boundary components. Let $\mathcal{C}(N)$ be the curve complex of $N$. We prove that if $(g, n) \neq (1,2)$ and $g + n \neq 4$, then there is an exhaustion of $\mathcal{C}(N)$ by a sequence of finite superrigid sets.
Let $S$ be a projective plane with $3$ holes. We prove that there is an exhaustion of the curve complex $\mathcal{C}(S)$ by a sequence of finite rigid sets. As a corollary, we obtain that the group of simplicial automorphisms of $\mathcal{C}(S)$ is isomorphic to the mapping class group $\mathrm{Mod}(S)$. We also prove that $\mathcal{C}(S)$ is quasi-isometric to a simplicial tree.
A classical inequality which is due to Lickorish and Hempel says that the distance between two curves in the curve complex can be measured by their intersection number. In this paper, we show a converse version; the intersection number of two curves can be measured by the sum of all subsurface projection distances between them. As an application of this result, we obtain a coarse decreasing property of the intersection numbers of the multicurves contained in tight multigeodesics. Furthermore, by using this property, we give an algorithm for determining the distance between two curves in the cu…
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.
We prove that the separated curve complex of a closed orientable surface of genus g is (g-3)-connected. We also obtain a connectivity property for a separated curve complex of the open surface that is obtained by removing a finite set from a closed one, but it is then assumed that the removed set is endowed with a partition and that the separating curves respect that partition. These connectivity statements have implications for the algebraic topology of the moduli space of curves.
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.
In all possible cases, we prove that local embeddings between two curve complexes whose complexities do not increase from domain to codomain are induced by surface homeomorphism. This is our first main result. From this we can deduce our second, a strong local co-Hopfian result for mapping class groups.
We classify pro-$p$ Poincaré duality pairs in dimension two. We then use this classification to build a pro-$p$ analogue of the curve complex and establish its basic properties. We conclude with some statements concerning separability properties of the mapping class group.
We give a combinatorial proof of an unpublished result of E. Klarreich: The Gromov boundary of the complex of curves of a non-exceptional oriented surface S of finite type can naturally be identified with the space of minimal geodesic laminations on S which fill up S, equipped with a coarse Hausdorff topology.
In genus two and higher, the fundamental group of a closed surface acts naturally on the curve complex of the surface with one puncture. Combining ideas from previous work of Kent--Leininger--Schleimer and Mitra, we construct a universal Cannon--Thurston map from a subset of the circle at infinity for the closed surface group onto the boundary of the curve complex of the once-punctured surface. Using the techniques we have developed, we also show that the boundary of this curve complex is locally path-connected.
In this paper we study the geometry of metric spheres in the curve complex of a surface, with the goal of determining the "average" distance between points on a given sphere. Averaging is not technically possible because metric spheres in the curve complex are countably infinite and do not support any invariant probability measures. To make sense of the idea of averaging, we instead develop definitions of null and generic subsets in a way that is compatible with the topological structure of the curve complex. With respect to this notion of genericity, we show that pairs of points on a sphere o…
We determine the relationship between the contact structure induced by a fibered knot, K, in the three-sphere and the contact structures induced by its various cables. Understanding this relationship allows us to classify fibered cable knots which bound a properly embedded complex curve in the four-ball satisfying a genus constraint. This generalizes the well-known classification of links of plane curve singularities.
We give a bound, linear in the complexity of the surface, on the asymptotic dimension of the curve complex as well as the capacity dimension of the ending lamination space.
Let $N$ be a compact, connected, nonorientable surface of genus $g$ with $n$ boundary components, and $\mathcal{C}(N)$ be the complex of curves of $N$. Suppose that $g + n \leq 3$ or $g + n \geq 5$. If $λ: \mathcal{C}(N) \rightarrow \mathcal{C}(N)$ is an injective simplicial map, then $λ$ is induced by a homeomorphism of $N$.
We establish bounds on the minimal asymptotic pseudo-Anosov translation lengths on the complex of curves of orientable surfaces. In particular, for a closed surface with genus $g \geqslant 2$, we show that there are positive constants $a_1 < a_2$ such that the minimal translation length is bounded below and above by $a_1/ g^2$ and $a_2/g^2$.
We show that $\mathbb{C}^2$ contains pairs of properly embedded, smooth complex curves that are isotopic through homeomorphisms but not diffeomorphisms of $\mathbb{C}^2$. The construction is based on realizing corks as branched covers of holomorphic disks in the 4-ball. These disks can also be described using exotic factorizations of quasipositive braids.
The coamoeba of any complex algebraic plane curve $V$ is its image in the real torus under the argument map. The area counted with multiplicity of the coamoeba of any algebraic curve in $(\mathbb{C}^*)^2$ is bounded in terms of the degree of the curve. We show in this Note that up to multiplication by a constant in $(\mathbb{C}^*)^2$, the complex algebraic plane curves whose coamoebas are of maximal area (counted with multiplicity) are defined over $\mathbb{R}$, and their real loci are Harnack curves possibly with ordinary real isolated double points (c.f. \cite{MR-00}). In addition, we charac…
Let Y be a complex algebraic curve and let [Y]={X_1,...,X_n} be the set of all real algebraic curves X_i with complexification X_i(C)=Y, such that the real points X_i(R) divide X_i(C). We find all such families [Y]. According to Harnak theorem a number |X_i| of connected components of X_i(R) satifies by the inequality |X_i|<= g+1, where g is the genus of Y. We prove that SUM |X_i| <= 2g-(n-9) 2^{n-3}-2 <= 2g+30 and these estimates are exact.