arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Allen Hatcher.
This paper corrects an error in a proof in the original version of the paper published in 1998 in the Oxford Quarterly. The main theorem remains the same: The geometric realization of the partially ordered set of proper free factors in a finitely generated free group of rank $n$ is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres of dimension $n-2$.
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 curves to the boundary, the stabilizers can be greatly simplified and consequently also the spectral sequence argument. We give a careful exposition of this program and its basic tools, then illustrate the method using braid groups before treating mapping class groups of orientable surfaces in full detail.
The observation that a graph of rank $n$ can be assembled from graphs of smaller rank $k$ with $s$ leaves by pairing the leaves together leads to a process for assembling homology classes for $Out(F_n)$ and $Aut(F_n)$ from classes for groups $\Gamma_{k,s}$, where the $\Gamma_{k,s}$ generalize $Out(F_k)=\Gamma_{k,0}$ and $Aut(F_k)=\Gamma_{k,1}$. The symmetric group $\Sigma_s$ acts on $H_*(\Gamma_{k,s})$ by permuting leaves, and for trivial rational coefficients we compute the $\Sigma_s$-module structure on $H_*(\Gamma_{k,s})$ completely for $k \leq 2$. Assembling these classes then produces all the known nontrivial rational homology classes for $Aut(F_n)$ and $Out(F_n)$ with the possible exception of classes for $n=7$ recently discovered by L. Bartholdi. It also produces an enormous number of candidates for other nontrivial classes, some old and some new, but we limit the number of these which can be nontrivial using the representation theory of symmetric groups. We gain new insight into some of the most promising candidates by finding small subgroups of $Aut(F_n)$ and $Out(F_n)$ which support them and by finding geometric representations for the candidate classes as maps of closed manifolds into the moduli space of graphs. Finally, our results have implications for the homology of the Lie algebra of symplectic derivations.
This is an expository paper giving a proof of the existence and uniqueness of smooth structures (hence also PL structures) on topological surfaces. Most published proofs rely on the topological Schoenflies theorem, but here we use instead the Kirby torus trick. This has the advantage of reducing the point-set topology in the proof to practically nothing, replacing it by a few basic facts about smooth surfaces. Uniqueness of smooth structures is proved in the strong form that every homeomorphism between smooth surfaces is isotopic to a diffeomorphism.
We give a new proof of the theorem of Birman-Powell that the Torelli subgroup of the mapping class group of a closed orientable surface of genus at least 3 is generated by simple homeomorphisms known as bounding pair maps. The key ingredient is a proof that the subcomplex of the curve complex of the surface spanned by curves within a fixed homology class is connected.
This is an exposition of a proof of the Madsen-Weiss Theorem, which asserts that the homology of mapping class groups of surfaces, in a stable dimension range, is isomorphic to the homology of a certain infinite loopspace that arises naturally when one applies the "scanning method". The proof given here utilizes simplifications introduced by Galatius and Randal-Williams.
A contractible simplicial complex is constructed that parametrizes different ways of representing a fixed one-dimensional homology class in a closed orientable surface by isotopy classes of systems of disjoint oriented simple closed curves. This is a variant on an earlier construction of Bestvina-Bux-Margalit.
The main result in this paper is that the space of all smooth links in Euclidean 3-space isotopic to the trivial link of n components has the same homotopy type as its finite-dimensional subspace consisting of configurations of n unlinked Euclidean circles (the "rings" in the title). There is also an analogous result for spaces of arcs in upper half-space, with circles replaced by semicircles (the "wickets" in the title). A key part of the proofs is a procedure for greatly reducing the complexity of tangled configurations of rings and wickets. This leads to simple methods for computing presentations for the fundamental groups of these spaces of rings and wickets as well as various interesting subspaces. The wicket spaces are also shown to be K(G,1)'s.
We prove that the homology of the mapping class group of any 3-manifold stabilizes under connected sum and boundary connected sum with an arbitrary 3-manifold when both manifolds are compact and orientable. The stabilization also holds for the quotient group by twists along spheres and disks, and includes as particular cases homological stability for symmetric automorphisms of free groups, automorphisms of certain free products, and handlebody mapping class groups. Our methods also apply to manifolds of other dimensions in the case of stabilization by punctures.
The purpose of this note is to point to a gap in an argument in our paper "Stabilization for the automorphisms of free groups with boundaries", and explain how to fill it.
We correct the proof of Theorem 5 of the paper Homology stability for outer automorphism groups of free groups, by the first two authors.
We prove that the quotient map from Aut(F_n) to Out(F_n) induces an isomorphism on homology in dimension i for n at least 2i+4. This corrects an earlier proof by the first author and significantly improves the stability range. In the course of the proof, we also prove homology stability for a sequence of groups which are natural analogs of mapping class groups of surfaces with punctures. In particular, this leads to a slight improvement on the known stability range for Aut(F_n), showing that its i-th homology is independent of n for n at least 2i+2.
The homology groups of the automorphism group of a free group are known to stabilize as the number of generators of the free group goes to infinity, and this paper relativizes this result to a family of groups that can be defined in terms of homotopy equivalences of a graph fixing a subgraph. This is needed for the second author's recent work on the relationship between the infinite loop structures on the classifying spaces of mapping class groups of surfaces and automorphism groups of free groups, after stabilization and plus-construction. We show more generally that the homology groups of mapping class groups of most compact orientable 3-manifolds, modulo twists along 2-spheres, stabilize under iterated connected sum with the product of a circle and a 2-sphere, and the stable groups are invariant under connected sum with a solid torus or a ball. These results are proved using complexes of disks and spheres in reducible 3-manifolds.
We consider the space of all smooth knots in the 3-sphere isotopic to a given knot, with the aim of finding a small subspace onto which this large space deformation retracts. For torus knots and many hyperbolic knots we show the subspace can be taken to be the orbit of a single maximally symmetric placement of the knot under the action of SO(4) by rotations of the ambient 3-sphere. This would hold for all hyperbolic knots if it were known that there are no exotic free actions of a finite cyclic group on the 3-sphere. For satellite knots the situation is more complicated but still describable in fairly simple terms. (This preliminary version of the paper does not include details for the case of satellite knots.)
We consider collections of disjoint simple closed curves in a compact orientable surface which decompose the surface into pairs of pants. The isotopy classes of such curve systems form the vertices of a 2-complex, whose edges correspond to certain simple moves in which only one curve changes, and whose 2-cells correspond to certain elementary cycles of simple moves. The main theorem is that this 2-complex is simply-connected. Thus any two pants decompositions of a surface are joinable by a sequence of simple moves, and any two such sequences of simple move are related by the elementary relations. The proof is similar to the proof, in a 1980 paper with W. Thurston, of an analogous result for curve systems with connected genus zero complement. [The present paper is essentially an excerpt from a joint paper with P. Lochak and L. Schneps which is to appear in Crelle's Journal.]
This is a "software upgrade" to a paper originally published in 1976, with cleaner statements and improved proofs. The main result is that, in a Haken 3-manifold, the space of all incompressible surfaces in a single isotopy class is contractible, except when the surface is the fiber of a surface bundle structure, in which case the space of all surfaces isotopic to the fiber has the homotopy type of a circle (the fibers). The main application from the 1976 paper is also rederived, the theorem (proved independently by Ivanov) that the diffeomorphism group of a Haken 3-manifold has contractible components, except in the case of certain Seifert manifolds when the components of the diffeomorphism group have the homotopy type of a circle or torus acting on the manifold.
This brief report (6 pages) was written in 1983 but never published. It concerns the hyperbolic 3-orbifolds obtained as quotients of hyperbolic 3-space by the group of invertible 2 by 2 matrices whose entries are integers in the imaginary quadratic extension of Q of discriminant D. For values D > -100 the topological type of this orbifold is tabulated, and in the cases when the topological type is a punctured 3-sphere, the singular locus of the orbifold is drawn. A few miscellaneous comments about these orbifolds are included. The tables and pictures are based on Bob Riley's computer calculations of Ford domains and face pairings. Nothing is said about later developments after 1983. The pictures are also viewable on my webpage in a perhaps more convenient format; see http://math.cornell.edu/~hatcher
The main theorem shows that if M is an irreducible compact connected orientable 3-manifold with non-empty boundary, then the classifying space BDiff(M rel dM) of the space of diffeomorphisms of M which restrict to the identity map on boundary(M) has the homotopy type of a finite aspherical CW-complex. This answers, for this class of manifolds, a question posed by M Kontsevich. The main theorem follows from a more precise result, which asserts that for these manifolds the mapping class group H(M rel dM) is built up as a sequence of extensions of free abelian groups and subgroups of finite index in relative mapping class groups of compact connected surfaces.