Canonical Symplectic Representations for Prime Order Conjugacy Classes of the Mapping-class Group

Twisted conjugacy classes in Symplectic groups, Mapping class groups and Braid groups(including an Appendix written with Francois Dahmani)

We prove that the symplectic group $Sp(2n,\mathbb Z)$ and the mapping class group $Mod_{S}$ of a compact surface $S$ satisfy the $R_{\infty}$ property. We also show that $B_n(S)$, the full braid group on $n$-strings of a surface $S$, satisfies the $R_{\infty}$ property in the cases where $S$ is either the compact disk $D$, or the sphere $S^2$. This means that for any automorphism $ϕ$ of $G$, where $G$ is one of the above groups, the number of twisted $ϕ$-conjugacy classes is infinite.

A Generalization of the Prime Geodesic Theorem to Counting Conjugacy Classes of Free Subgroups

The classical prime geodesic theorem (PGT) gives an asymptotic formula (as $x$ tends to infinity) for the number of closed geodesics with length at most $x$ on a hyperbolic manifold $M$. Closed geodesics correspond to conjugacy classes of $π_1(M)=Γ$ where $Γ$ is a lattice in $G=SO(n,1)$. The theorem can be rephrased in the following format. Let $X(\Z,Γ)$ be the space of representations of $\Z$ into $Γ$ modulo conjugation by $Γ$. $X(\Z,G)$ is defined similarly. Let $π: X(\Z,Γ)\to X(\Z,G)$ be the projection map. The PGT provides a volume form $vol$ on $X(\Z,G)$ such that for sequences of subsets…

元-nilpotent 结合不变量与自由 nilpotent 群的 symplectic 自动群

Meta-nilpotent knot invariants and symplectic automorphism groups of free nilpotent groups

本文通过自由 nilpotent 群的 symplectic 自动群，研究了元-nilpotent 结合不变量的构造与计算方法。

Mapping classes are almost determined by their finite quotient actions

Given any connected compact orientable surface, a pair of mapping classes are said to be procongruently conjugate if they induce a conjugate pair of outer automophisms on the profinite completion of the fundamental group of the surface. For example, this occurs if they induce conjugate outer automorphisms on every characteristic finite quotient of the fundamental group. In this paper, it is shown that every procongruent conjugacy class of mapping classes, as a subset of the surface mapping class group, is the disjoint union of at most finitely many conjugacy classes of mapping classes. For any…

Integration and conjugacy in knot theory

This thesis consists of three self-contained chapters. The first two concern quantum invariants of links and three manifolds and the third contains results on the word problem for link groups. In chapter 1 we relate the tree part of the Aarhus integral to the mu-invariants of string-links in homology balls thus generalizing results of Habegger and Masbaum. There is a folklore result in physics saying that the Feynman integration of an exponential is itself an exponential. In chapter 2 we state and prove an exact formulation of this statement in the language which is used in the theory of finit…

Virtual Betti numbers and virtual symplecticity of 4-dimensional mapping tori

In this note, we compute the virtual first Betti numbers of 4-manifolds fibering over $S^1$ with prime fiber. As an application, we show that if such a manifold is symplectic with nonpositive Kodaira dimension, then the fiber itself is a sphere or torus bundle over $S^1$. In a different direction, we prove that if the 3-dimensional fiber of such a 4-manifold is virtually fibered then the 4-manifold is virtually symplectic unless its virtual first Betti number is 1.