arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Livio Liechti.
We determine the minimal spectral radii among all skew-reciprocal integer matrices of a fixed even dimension that are primitive or nonnegative and irreducible. In particular, except for dimension six, we show that each such class of matrices realises smaller spectral radii than the corresponding reciprocal class.
We show that for $g\ge 2$, all integers $1 \le d \le 3g-3$ arise as trace field degrees of pseudo-Anosov mapping classes in the Torelli group of the closed orientable surface of genus $g$. Our method uses the Thurston-Veech construction of pseudo-Anosov maps, and we provide examples where the stretch factor has algebraic degree any even number between two and $6g-6$. This validates a claim by Thurston from the 1980s.
We show that the signature of a positive braid link is bounded from below by one-quarter of its first Betti number. This equates to one-half of the optimal bound conjectured by Feller, who previously provided a bound of one-eighth.
We show that the stretch factor $λ(f)$ of an orientation-reversing fully-punctured pseudo-Anosov map $f$ on a finite-type orientable surface $S$, with $-χ(S) \geq 4$ and having at least two puncture orbits, satisfies the inequality $λ(f)^{-χ(S)} \geq σ^2$, where $σ=1+\sqrt{2}$ is the silver ratio. We provide examples showing that this bound is asymptotically sharp. This extends previous results of Hironaka and the third author to orientation-reversing maps.
We show that not every Salem number appears as the growth rate of a cocompact hyperbolic Coxeter group. We also give a new proof of the fact that the growth rates of planar hyperbolic Coxeter groups are spectral radii of Coxeter transformations, and show that this need not be the case for growth rates of hyperbolic tetrahedral Coxeter groups.
Among all bi-Perron numbers, we characterise those all of whose Galois conjugates are real or unimodular as the ones that admit a power which is the stretch factor of a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism arising from Thurston's construction. This is in turn equivalent to admitting a power which is the spectral radius of a bipartite Coxeter transformation.
For any nonorientable closed surface, we determine the minimal dilatation among pseudo-Anosov mapping classes arising from Penner's construction. We deduce that the sequence of minimal Penner dilatations has exactly two accumulation points, in contrast to the case of orientable surfaces where there is only one accumulation point. One of our key techniques is representing pseudo-Anosov dilatations as roots of Alexander polynomials of fibred links and comparing dilatations using the skein relation for Alexander polynomials.
We prove that every even number $2 \le 2d \le 2g$ is realised as the degree of a Thurston-Veech pseudo-Anosov stretch factor in every connected component of every stratum of the moduli space of Abelian differentials.
We construct divide knots with arbitrary smooth four-genus but topological four-genus equal to one. In particular, for strongly quasipositive fibred knots, the ratio between the topological and the smooth four-genus can be arbitrarily close to zero.
The set of quasipositive surfaces is closed under incompressible inclusion. We prove that the induced order on fibre surfaces of positive braid links is almost a well-quasi-order. When restricting to quasipositive surfaces containing a fixed root of a full twist, we get an actual well-quasi-order.
We introduce the notions of overcommutation and overcommutation length in groups, and show that these concepts are closely related to representations of the fundamental groups of 3-manifold and their Heegaard genus. We give many examples including translations in the affine group of the line and provide upper bounds for the overcommutation length in SL_2, related to the Steinberg relation.
We give a new description of the Arnoux-Yoccoz mapping classes as a product of two Dehn twists and a finite order element. The construction is analogous to Penner's construction of mapping classes with small stretch factors.
We reformulate Lehmer's question from 1933 and a question due to Schinzel and Zassenhaus from 1965 in terms of a comparison of the Mahler measures and the houses, respectively, of monic integer reciprocal and skew-reciprocal polynomials of the same degree. This entails that understanding the difference between orientation-preserving and orientation-reversing mapping classes is at least as complicated as answering these questions.
We show that the difference between the Seifert genus and the topological 4-genus of a prime positive braid knot is bounded from below by an affine function of the minimal number of strands among positive braid representatives of the knot. We deduce that among prime positive braid knots, the property of having such a genus difference less than any fixed constant is characterised by finitely many forbidden surface minors.
We determine the smallest stretch factor among pseudo-Anosov maps with an orientable invariant foliation on the closed nonorientable surfaces of genus 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20. We also determine the smallest stretch factor of an orientation-reversing pseudo-Anosov map with orientable invariant foliations on the closed orientable surfaces of genus 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11. As a byproduct, we obtain that the stretch factor of a pseudo-Anosov map on a nonorientable surface or an orientation-reversing pseudo-Anosov map on an orientable surface does not have Galois conjugates on the unit circle. This shows that the techniques that were used to disprove Penner's conjecture on orientable surfaces are ineffective in the nonorientable cases.
We give an algorithm for computing the Teichmüller polynomial for a certain class of fibered alternating links associated to trees. Furthermore, we exhibit a mutant pair of such links distinguished by the Teichmüller polynomial.
We associate an open book with any connected plane checkerboard graph, thus providing a common extension of the classes of prime positive braid links and positive tree-like Hopf plumbings. As an application, we prove that the link type of a prime positive braid closure is determined by the linking graph associated with that braid.
A divide on an orientable 2-orbifold gives rise to a fibration of the unit tangent bundle to the orbifold.We characterize the corresponding monodromies as exactly the products of a left-veering horizontal and a right-veering vertical antitwist with respect to a cylinder decomposition, where the notion of an antitwist is an orientation-reversing analogue of a multitwist. Many divide monodromies are pseudo-Anosov and we give plenty of examples.In particular, we show that there exist divide monodromies with stretch factor arbitrarily close to one, and give an example none of whose powers can be obtained by Penner's or Thurston's construction of pseudo-Anosov mapping classes.As a side product, we also get a new combinatorial construction of pseudo-Anosov mapping classes in terms of products of antitwists.