We compute the mod 2 homology of spin mapping class groups in the stable range. In earlier work we computed the stable mod p homology of the oriented mapping class group, and the methods and results here are very similar. The forgetful map from the spin mapping class group to the oriented mapping class groups induces a homology isomorphism for odd p but for p=2 it is far from being an isomorphism. We include a general discussion of tangential structures on 2-manifolds and their mapping class groups and then specialise to spin structures. As in Madsen and Weiss' solution to Mumford's conjecture, the stable homology is the homology of the zero space of a certain Thom spectrum.
We calculate the homology of the mapping class group in the stable range. The calculation is based on Madsen and Weiss' proof of the "Generalised Mumford Conjecture".
We consider the Birman-Hilden inclusion $φ\colon\mathfrak{Br}_{2g+1}\toΓ_{g,1}$ of the braid group into the mapping class group of an orientable surface with boundary, and prove that $φ$ is stably trivial in homology with twisted coefficients in the symplectic representation $H_1(Σ_{g,1})$ of the mapping class group; this generalises a result of Song and Tillmann regarding homology with constant coefficients. Furthermore we show that the stable homology of the braid group with coefficients in $φ^*(H_1(Σ_{g,1}))$ has only $4$-torsion.
In this paper, we deal with stable homology computations with twisted coefficients for mapping class groups of surfaces and of 3-manifolds, automorphism groups of free groups with boundaries and automorphism groups of certain right-angled Artin groups. On the one hand, the computations are led using semidirect product structures arising naturally from these groups. On the other hand, we compute the stable homology with twisted coefficients by FI-modules. This notably uses a decomposition result of the stable homology with twisted coefficients for pre-braided monoidal categories proved in this …
Combining results of Wahl, Galatius--Madsen--Tillmann--Weiss and Korkmaz one can identify the homotopy-type of the classifying space of the stable non-orientable mapping class group $N_\infty$ (after plus-construction). At odd primes p, the F_p-homology coincides with that of $Q_0(HP^\infty_+)$, but at the prime 2 the result is less clear. We identify the F_2-homology as a Hopf algebra in terms of the homology of well-known spaces. As an application we tabulate the integral stable homology of $N_\infty$ in degrees up to six. As in the oriented case, not all of these cohomology classes have a g…
Let $Γ_{g,1}^m$ be the mapping class group of the orientable surface $Σ_{g,1}^m$ of genus $g$ with one parametrised boundary curve and $m$ permutable punctures; when $m=0$ we omit it from the notation. Let $β_{m}(Σ_{g,1})$ be the braid group on $m$ strands of the surface $Σ_{g,1}$. We prove that $H_*(Γ_{g,1}^m;\mathbb{Z}_2)\cong H_*(Γ_{g,1};H_*(β_{m}(Σ_{g,1});\mathbb{Z}_2))$. The main ingredient is the computation of $H_*(β_{m}(Σ_{g,1});\mathbb{Z}_2)$ as a symplectic representation of $Γ_{g,1}$.
We construct a graph complex calculating the integral ho- mology of the bordered mapping class groups. We compute the ho- mology of the bordered mapping class groups of various surfaces. Using the circle action on this graph complex, we build a double complex and a spectral sequence converging to the homology of the unbordered mapping class groups. We compute the homology of the punctured mapping class groups associated to certain surfaces. Finally, we use Miller's operad to get the first Kudo-Araki and Browder operations on our graph complex. We also consider an unstable version of the higher…
Let $H_{g}$ be a 3-dimensional handlebody of genus $g$. We determine the twisted first homology group of the mapping class group of $H_{g}$ with coefficients in the first integral homology group of the boundary surface $\partial H_{g}$ for $g\geq 2$.
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.
We report on the computation of the integral homology of the mapping class group of genus g surfaces with one boundary curve and m punctures, when 2g + m is smaller than 6. In particular, it includes the genus 2 case with no or one puncture.
We give definitions of moduli spaces of framed, r-Spin and Pin surfaces. We apply earlier work of the author to show that each of these moduli spaces exhibits homological stability, and we identify the stable integral homology with that of certain infinite loop spaces in each case. We further show that these moduli spaces each have path components which are Eilenberg--MacLane spaces for the framed, r-Spin and Pin mapping class groups respectively, and hence we also identify the stable group homology of these groups. In particular: the stable framed mapping class group has trivial rational homo…
Let Map(K,X) denote the space of pointed continuous maps from a finite cell complex K to a space X. Let E_* be a generalized homology theory. We use Goodwillie calculus methods to prove that under suitable conditions on K and X, Map(K, X) will send a E_*--isomorphism in either variable to a map that is monic in E_* homology. Interesting examples arise by letting E_* be K--theory, K be a sphere, and the map in the X variable be an exotic unstable Adams map between Moore spaces.
We study quotients of mapping class groups (Γ_{g,1}) of oriented surfaces with one boundary component by terms of their Johnson filtrations, and we show that the homology of these quotients with suitable systems of twisted coefficients stabilises as the genus of the surface goes to infinity. We also compute the stable (co)homology with constant rational coefficients for one family of such quotients.
For any smooth compact manifold $W$ of dimension at least two we prove that the classifying spaces of its group of diffeomorphisms which fix a set of $k$ points or $k$ embedded disks (up to permutation) satisfy homology stability. The same is true for so-called symmetric diffeomorphisms of $W$ connected sum with $k$ copies of an arbitrary compact smooth manifold $Q$ of the same dimension. The analogues for mapping class groups as well as other generalisations will also be proved.
In the paper we investigate the degree and the homotopy theory of Orlicz-Sobolev mappings $W^{1,P}(M,N)$ between manifolds, where the Young function $P$ satisfies a divergence condition and forms a slightly larger space than $W^{1,n}$, $n=\dim M$. In particular, we prove that if $M$ and $N$ are compact oriented manifolds without boundary and $\dim M=\dim N=n$, then the degree is well defined in $W^{1,P}(M,N)$ if and only if the universal cover of $N$ is not a rational homology sphere, and in the case $n=4$, if and only if $N$ is not homeomorphic to $S^4$.
We compute the rational stable homology of the automorphism groups of free nilpotent groups. These groups interpolate between the general linear groups over the ring of integers and the automorphism groups of free groups, and we employ functor homology to reduce to the abelian case. As an application, we also compute the rational stable homology of the outer automorphism groups and of the mapping class groups of the associated aspherical nil-manifolds in the TOP, PL, and DIFF categories.
We focus on two kinds of infinite index subgroups of the mapping class group of a surface associated with a Lagrangian submodule of the first homology of a surface. These subgroups, called Lagrangian mapping class groups, are known to play important roles in the interaction between the mapping class group and finite-type invariants of 3-manifolds. In this paper, we discuss these groups from a group (co)homological point of view. The results include the determination of their abelianizations, lower bounds of the second homology and remarks on the (co)homology of higher degrees. As a by-product …
We compute the abelianisations of the mapping class groups of the manifolds $W_g^{2n} = g(S^n \times S^n)$ for $n \geq 3$ and $g \geq 5$. The answer is a direct sum of two parts. The first part arises from the action of the mapping class group on the middle homology, and takes values in the abelianisation of the automorphism group of the middle homology. The second part arises from bordism classes of mapping cylinders and takes values in the quotient of the stable homotopy groups of spheres by a certain subgroup which in many cases agrees with the image of the stable $J$-homomorphism. We relat…
In this paper we study the topology of the space of Riemann surfaces in a simply connected space X, S_{g,n} (X, γ). This is the space consisting of triples, (F_{g,n}, ϕ, f), where F_{g,n} is a Riemann surface of genus g and n-boundary components, ϕis a parameterization of the boundary, and f : F_{g,n} \to X is a continuous map that satisfies a boundary condition γ. We prove three theorems about these spaces. Our main theorem is the identification of the stable homology type of the space S_{\infty, n}(X; γ), defined to be the limit as the genus g gets large, of the spaces S_{g,n} (X; γ). Our re…
In this paper we compute the homology of the braid groups, with coefficients in the module Z[q^+-1] given by the ring of Laurent polynomials with integer coefficients and where the action of the braid group is defined by mapping each generator of the standard presentation to multiplication by -q. The homology thus computed is isomorphic to the homology with constant coefficients of the Milnor fiber of the discriminantal singularity.
In this paper we prove stability results for the homology of the mapping class group of a surface. We get a stability range that is near optimal, and extend the result to twisted coefficients.
Wahl recently proved that the homology of the non-orientable mapping class group stabilizes as the genus increases. In this short note we analyse the situation where the underlying non-orientable surfaces have marked points.
A homology cylinder over a surface consists of a homology cobordism between two copies of the surface and markings of its boundary. The set of isomorphism classes of homology cylinders over a fixed surface has a natural monoid structure and it is known that this monoid can be seen as an enlargement of the mapping class group of the surface. We now focus on abelian quotients of this monoid. We show that both the monoid of all homology cylinders and that of irreducible homology cylinders are not finitely generated and moreover they have big abelian quotients. These properties contrast with the f…
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a version of singular homology based on smooth mappings of manifolds with corners. Although variants of such a theory exists in the literature, we felt that certain points were not adequately addressed. In particular, our goal is to construct a chain level theory based on smooth mappings of manifolds with corners. In addition, we will avoid using the fact that smooth manifolds with can be triangulated. As we shall see, transversality and intersections play a major role in setting up this theory. From a pedagogical viewpoint, having intersection theory …
The mapping spaces of the $r$-truncated versions of the $E_n$ operads appear as the $r$-th stage of the Taylor tower for long embedding spaces. It has been shown that their rational homotopy groups can be expressed through graph homology in the limit $r\to \infty$. For finite $r$ only a part of the graph homology appears in the homotopy groups of the Taylor tower at this stage, possibly along with some additional unstable homotopy groups. In this paper we study the convergence properties in some more detail. In particular, we provide bounds for the stage $r$ at which the various graph homology…
We exhibit a finitely generated group $\M$ whose rational homology is isomorphic to the rational stable homology of the mapping class group. It is defined as a mapping class group associated to a surface $\su$ of infinite genus, and contains all the pure mapping class groups of compact surfaces of genus $g$ with $n$ boundary components, for any $g\geq 0$ and $n>0$. We construct a representation of $\M$ into the restricted symplectic group ${\rm Sp_{res}}({\cal H}_r)$ of the real Hilbert space generated by the homology classes of non-separating circles on $\su$, which generalizes the classical …
We prove that the homology of the mapping class groups of non-orientable surfaces stabilizes with the genus of the surface. Combining our result with recent work of Madsen and Weiss, we obtain that the classifying space of the stable mapping class group of non-orientable surfaces, up to homology isomorphism, is the infinite loop space of a Thom spectrum build from the canonical bundle over the Grassmannians of 2-planes in R^{n+2}. In particular, we show that the stable rational cohomology is a polynomial algebra on generators in degrees 4i--this is the non-oriented analogue of the Mumford conj…
This work is NOT to be used as reference. First, because as C.F.~Bödigheimer and M.~Korkmaz pointed to us the computation of the $\mathbf{Z}_2$ factor that remained undecided in M.~Korkmaz and A. Stipsicz, {\em The second homology groups of mapping class groups of orientable surfaces.} Math. Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc., was shown to exist by Skasai, see hi Theorem 4.9 and Corollary 4.10 in {\em Lagrangian mapping class groups from a group homological point of view.} Algebr. Geom. Topol. 12 (2012), no. 1, 267--291. Second, because one could obtain this result by gathering old results in the literatu…
For a given bundle $ξ\colon E \to M$ over a manifold, configuration-section spaces on $ξ$ parametrise finite subsets $z \subseteq M$ equipped with a section of $ξ$ defined on $M \smallsetminus z$, with prescribed "charge" in a neighbourhood of the points $z$. These spaces may be interpreted physically as spaces of fields that are permitted to be singular at finitely many points, with constrained behaviour near the singularities. As a special case, they include the Hurwitz spaces, which parametrise branched covering spaces of the $2$-disc with specified deck transformation group. We prove that …
We prove a new kind of stabilisation result, "secondary homological stability", for the homology of mapping class groups of orientable surfaces with one boundary component. These results are obtained by constructing CW approximations to the classifying spaces of these groups, in the category of $E_2$-algebras, which have no $E_2$-cells below a certain vanishing line.
Fix a finite group G and an n-dimensional orthogonal G-representation V. We define the equivariant factorization homology of a V-framed smooth G-manifold with coefficients in an $E_V$-algebra using a two-sided bar construction, generalizing [And10, KM18]. This construction uses minimal categorical background and aims for maximal concreteness, allowing convenient proofs of key properties, including invariance of equivariant factorization homology under change of tangential structures. Using a geometrically-seen scanning map, we prove an equivariant version (eNPD) of the nonabelian Poincare dual…
In this paper, we briefly review some of the known results concerning the cohomological structures of the mapping class group of surfaces, the outer automorphism group of free groups, the diffeomorphism group of surfaces as well as various subgroups of them such as the Torelli group, the IA outer automorphism group of free groups, the symplectomorphism group of surfaces. Based on these, we present several conjectures and problems concerning the cohomology of these groups. We are particularly interested in the possible interplays between these cohomology groups rather than merely the structures…
Let $Γ$ be a finite-index subgroup of the mapping class group of a closed genus $g$ surface that contains the Torelli group. For instance, $Γ$ can be the level $L$ subgroup or the spin mapping class group. We show that $H_2(Γ;\Q) \cong \Q$ for $g \geq 5$. A corollary of this is that the rational Picard groups of the associated finite covers of the moduli space of curves are equal to $\Q$. We also prove analogous results for surface with punctures and boundary components.
We develop a theory of equivariant group presentations and relate them to the second homology group of a group. Our main application says that the second homology group of the Torelli subgroup of the mapping class group is finitely generated as an $Sp(2g,\mathbb{Z})$-module.
In this paper we compute the mapping class group of simply-connected closed smooth manifolds $M$ with integral homology $H_{*}(M) \cong \mathbb Z \oplus \mathbb Z \oplus \mathbb Z$ provided that $\dim M \ne 4$.
In our earlier papers we constructed examples of 2-dimensional nonaspherical simply-connected cell-like Peano continua, called {\sl Snake space}. In the sequel we introduced the functor $SC(-,-)$ defined on the category of all spaces with base points and continuous mappings. For the circle $S^1$, the space $SC(S^1, \ast)$ is a Snake space. In the present paper we study the higher-dimensional homology and homotopy properties of the spaces $SC(Z, \ast)$ for any path-connected compact spaces $Z$.
We prove a representation stability result for the second homology groups of Torelli subgroups of mapping class groups and automorphism groups of free groups. This strengthens the results of Boldsen-Hauge Dollerup and Day-Putman. We also prove a new representation stability result for the homology of certain congruence subgroups, partially improving upon the work of Putman-Sam. These results follow from a general theorem on syzygies of certain modules with finite polynomial degree.
We study oriented closed manifolds M^n possessing the following Universal Realisation of Cycles (URC) Property: For each topological space X and each integral homology class z of it, there exist a finite-sheeted covering \hM^n of M^n and a continuous mapping f of \hM^n to X such that f takes the fundamental class [\hM^n] to kz for a non-zero integer k. We find wide class of examples of such manifolds M^n among so-called small covers of simple polytopes. In particular, we find 4-dimensional hyperbolic manifolds possessing the URC property. As a consequence, we prove that for each 4-dimensional …
We let the mapping class group $Γ_{g,1}$ of a genus $g$ surface $Σ_{g,1}$ with one boundary component act on the homology $H_*(F_{n}(Σ_{g,1});\mathbb{Q})$ of the $n^{th}$ ordered configuration space of the surface. We prove that the action is non-trivial when restricted to the $(n-1)^{st}$ stage of the Johnson filtration, for all $n\ge 1$ and $g\ge 2$. We deduce an analogous result for closed surfaces.
Homological stability for sequences of groups is often proved by studying the spectral sequence associated to the action of a typical group in the sequence on a highly-connected simplicial complex whose stabilizers are related to previous groups in the sequence. In the case of mapping class groups of manifolds, suitable simplicial complexes can be made using isotopy classes of various geometric objects in the manifold. In this paper we focus on the case of surfaces and show that by using more refined geometric objects consisting of certain configurations of curves with arcs that tether these c…
Dehn twists around simple closed curves in oriented surfaces satisfy the braid relations. This gives rise to a group theoretic from the braid group to the mapping class group. We prove here that this map is trivial in stable homology with any trivial coefficients. In particular this proves an old conjecture of J. Harer. The main tool is categorical delooping. In an appendix we discuss geometrically defined homomorphisms from the braid to the mapping class group.
Let G be a discrete group. We give methods to compute for a generalized (co-)homology theory its values on the Borel construction (EG x X)/G of a proper G-CW-complex X satisfying certain finiteness conditions. In particular we give formulas computing the topological K-(co)homology of the classifying space BG up to finite abelian torsion groups. They apply for instance to arithmetic groups, word hyperbolic groups, mapping class groups and discrete cocompact subgroups of almost connected Lie groups. For finite groups G these formulas are sharp. The main new tools we use for the K-theory calculat…
We compute the mapping class group of the manifolds $\sharp^g(S^{2k+1}\times S^{2k+1})$ for $k>0$ in terms of the automorphism group of the middle homology and the group of homotopy $(4k+3)$-spheres. We furthermore identify its Torelli subgroup, determine the abelianisations, and relate our results to the group of homotopy equivalences of these manifolds.
We give a complete and detailed proof of Harer's stability theorem for the homology of mapping class groups of surfaces, with the best stability range presently known. This theorem and its proof have seen several improvements since Harer's original proof in the mid-80's, and our purpose here is to assemble these many additions.
Morita introduced in 2008 a 1-cocycle on the group of homology cobordisms of surfaces with values in an infinite-dimensional vector space. His 1-cocycle contains all the "traces" of Johnson homomorphisms which he introduced fifteen years earlier in his study of the mapping class group. In this paper, we propose a new version of Morita's 1-cocycle based on a simple and explicit construction. Our 1-cocycle is proved to satisfy several fundamental properties, including a connection with the Magnus representation and the LMO homomorphism. As an application, we show that the rational abelianization…
The homology groups of many natural sequences of groups $\{G_n\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ (e.g. general linear groups, mapping class groups, etc.) stabilize as $n \rightarrow \infty$. Indeed, there is a well-known machine for proving such results that goes back to early work of Quillen. Church and Farb discovered that many sequences of groups whose homology groups do not stabilize in the classical sense actually stabilize in some sense as representations. They called this phenomena representation stability. We prove that the homology groups of congruence subgroups of $GL_n(R)$ (for almost any reasonabl…
We study a family of Lie algebras {hO} which are defined for cyclic operads O. Using his graph homology theory, Kontsevich identified the homology of two of these Lie algebras (corresponding to the Lie and associative operads) with the cohomology of outer automorphism groups of free groups and mapping class groups of punctured surfaces, respectively. In this paper we introduce a hairy graph homology theory for O. We show that the homology of hO embeds in hairy graph homology via a trace map which generalizes the trace map defined by S. Morita. For the Lie operad we use the trace map to find la…
