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Johanna Mangahas

Publications and source records attributed to Johanna Mangahas.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Stable subgroups of graph products

We extend the characterization of stable subgroups of right-angled Artin groups of Koberda, Mangahas and Taylor to the case of graph products of infinite groups. Specifically, we show that the stable subgroups of such graph products are exactly the subgroups that quasi-isometrically embed in the associated contact graph. Equivalently, they are the subgroups that satisfy a condition arising from the defining graph: a stable subgroup is an almost join-free subgroup. In particular, we generalize the equivalence between stable and purely loxodromic subgroups from Koberda, Mangahas and Taylor in the case where all torsion subgroups of the vertex groups are finite, and the equivalence between stable and infinite index Morse subgroups from Tran in the case where the defining graph is connected.

math.GR↗
arXiv2025

(Non-)Recognizing Spaces for Stable Subgroups

In this note, we consider the notion of what we call recognizing spaces for stable subgroups of a given group. When a group $G$ is a mapping class group or right-angled Artin group, it is known that a subgroup is stable exactly when the largest acylindrical action $G \curvearrowright X$ provides a quasi-isometric embedding of the subgroup into $X$ via the orbit map. In this sense the largest acylindrical action for mapping class groups and right-angled Artin groups provides a recognizing space for all stable subgroups. In contrast, we construct an acylindrically hyperbolic group (relatively hyperbolic, in fact) whose largest acylindrical action does not recognize all stable subgroups.

math.GR↗
arXiv2021

Right-angled Artin groups as normal subgroups of mapping class groups

We construct the first examples of normal subgroups of mapping class groups that are isomorphic to non-free right-angled Artin groups. Our construction also gives normal, non-free right-angled Artin subgroups of other groups, such as braid groups and pure braid groups, as well as many subgroups of the mapping class group, such as the Torelli subgroup. Our work recovers and generalizes the seminal result of Dahmani-Guirardel-Osin, which gives free, purely pseudo-Anosov normal subgroups of mapping class groups. We give two applications of our methods: (1) we produce an explicit proper normal subgroup of the mapping class group that is not contained in any level $m$ congruence subgroup, and (2) we produce an explicit example of a pseudo-Anosov mapping class with the property that all of its even powers have free normal closure and its odd powers normally generate the entire mapping class group. The technical theorem at the heart of our work is a new version of the windmill apparatus of Dahmani-Guirardel-Osin, which is tailored to the setting of group actions on the projection complexes of Bestvina-Bromberg-Fujiwara.

math.GT↗
arXiv2020

Hyperbolic quotients of projection complexes

This paper is a continuation of our previous work with Margalit where we studied group actions on projection complexes. In that paper, we demonstrated sufficient conditions so that the normal closure of a family of subgroups of vertex stabilizers is a free product of certain conjugates of these subgroups. In this paper, we study both the quotient of the projection complex by this normal subgroup and the action of the quotient group on the quotient of the projection complex. We show that under certain conditions that the quotient complex is $δ$-hyperbolic. Additionally, under certain circumstances, we show that if the original action on the projection complex was a non-elementary WPD action, then so is the action of the quotient group on the quotient of the projection complex. This implies that the quotient group is acylindrically hyperbolic.

math.GR↗
arXiv2016

The geometry of purely loxodromic subgroups of right-angled Artin groups

We prove that finitely generated purely loxodromic subgroups of a right-angled Artin group $A(Γ)$ fulfill equivalent conditions that parallel characterizations of convex cocompactness in mapping class groups $\text{Mod}(S)$. In particular, such subgroups are quasiconvex in $A(Γ)$. In addition, we identify a milder condition for a finitely generated subgroup of $A(Γ)$ that guarantees it is free, undistorted, and retains finite generation when intersected with $A(Λ)$ for subgraphs $Λ$ of $Γ$. These results have applications to both the study of convex cocompactness in $\text{Mod}(S)$ and the way in which certain groups can embed in right-angled Artin groups.

math.GR↗
arXiv2014

An effective algebraic detection of the Nielsen--Thurston classification of mapping classes

In this article, we propose two algorithms for determining the Nielsen-Thurston classification of a mapping class $ψ$ on a surface $S$. We start with a finite generating set $X$ for the mapping class group and a word $ψ$ in $\langle X \rangle$. We show that if $ψ$ represents a reducible mapping class in $\Mod(S)$ then $ψ$ admits a canonical reduction system whose total length is exponential in the word length of $ψ$. We use this fact to find the canonical reduction system of $ψ$. We also prove an effective conjugacy separability result for $π_1(S)$ which allows us to lift the action of $ψ$ to a finite cover $\yt{S}$ of $S$ whose degree depends computably on the word length of $ψ$, and to use the homology action of $ψ$ on $H_1(\yt{S},\mathbb{C})$ to determine the Nielsen-Thurston classification of $ψ$.

math.GT↗
arXiv2013

Convex cocompactness in mapping class groups via quasiconvexity in right-angled Artin groups

We characterize convex cocompact subgroups of mapping class groups that arise as subgroups of specially embedded right-angled Artin groups. That is, if the right-angled Artin group G in Mod(S) satisfies certain conditions that imply G is quasi-isometrically embedded in Mod(S), then a purely pseudo-Anosov subgroup H of G is convex cocompact in Mod(S) if and only if it is combinatorially quasiconvex in G. We use this criterion to construct convex cocompact subgroups of Mod(S) whose orbit maps into the curve complex have small Lipschitz constants.

math.GT↗
arXiv2010

A recipe for short-word pseudo-Anosovs

Given any generating set of any pseudo-Anosov-containing subgroup of the mapping class group of a surface, we construct a pseudo-Anosov with word length bounded by a constant depending only on the surface. More generally, in any subgroup G we find an element f with the property that the minimal subsurface supporting a power of f is as large as possible for elements of G; the same constant bounds the word length of f. Along the way we find new examples of convex cocompact free subgroups of the mapping class group.

math.GT↗
arXiv2010

The geometry of right angled Artin subgroups of mapping class groups

We describe sufficient conditions which guarantee that a finite set of mapping classes generate a right-angled Artin group quasi-isometrically embedded in the mapping class group. Moreover, under these conditions, the orbit map to Teichmuller space is a quasi-isometric embedding for both of the standard metrics. As a consequence, we produce infinitely many genus h surfaces (for any h at least 2) in the moduli space of genus g surfaces (for any g at least 3) for which the universal covers are quasi-isometrically embedded in the Teichmuller space.

math.GT↗
arXiv2009

Uniform uniform exponential growth of subgroups of the mapping class group

Let Mod(S) denote the mapping class group of a compact, orientable surface S. We prove that finitely generated subgroups of Mod(S) which are not virtually abelian have uniform exponential growth with minimal growth rate bounded below by a constant depending only, and necessarily, on S. For the proof, we find in any such subgroup explicit free group generators which are "short" in any word metric. Besides bounding growth, this allows a bound on the return probability of simple random walks.

math.GT↗