ABELIAN CYCLES IN THE HOMOLOGY OF THE TORELLI GROUP

In the early 1980s, Johnson defined a homomorphism $\mathcal {I}_{g}^1\to \bigwedge ^3 H_1\left (S_{g},\mathbb {Z}\right )$ , where $\mathcal {I}_{g}^1$ is the Torelli group of a closed, connected, and oriented surface of genus g with a boundary component and $S_g$ is the corresponding surface without a boundary component. This is known as the Johnson homomorphism. We study the map induced by the Johnson homomorphism on rational homology groups and apply it to abelian cycles determined by disjoint bounding-pair maps, in order to compute a large quotient of $H_n\left (\mathcal {I}_{g}^1,\mathbb {Q}\right )$ in the stable range. This also implies an analogous result for the stable rational homology of the Torelli group $\mathcal {I}_{g,1}$ of a surface with a marked point instead of a boundary component. Further, we investigate how much of the image of this map is generated by images of such cycles and use this to prove that in the pointed case, they generate a proper subrepresentation of $H_n\left (\mathcal {I}_{g,1}\right )$ for $n\ge 2$ and g large enough.

Finiteness and infiniteness results for Torelli groups of (hyper-)Kähler manifolds

The Torelli group $$\mathcal T(X)$$ T ( X ) of a closed smooth manifold X is the subgroup of the mapping class group $$\pi _0(\mathrm {Diff}^+(X))$$ π 0 ( Diff + ( X ) ) consisting of elements which act trivially on the integral cohomology of X. In this note we give counterexamples to Theorem 3.4 by Verbitsky (Duke Math J 162(15):2929–2986, 2013) which states that the Torelli group of simply connected Kähler manifolds of complex dimension $$\ge 3$$ ≥ 3 is finite. This is done by constructing under some mild conditions homomorphisms $$J: \mathcal T(X) \rightarrow H^3(X;\mathbb Q)$$ J : T ( X ) → H 3 ( X ; Q ) and showing that for certain Kähler manifolds this map is non-trivial. We also give a counterexample to Theorem 3.5 (iv) in (Verbitsky in Duke Math J 162(15):2929–2986, 2013) where Verbitsky claims that the Torelli group of hyperkähler manifolds are finite. These examples are detected by the action of diffeomorphsims on $$\pi _4(X)$$ π 4 ( X ) . Finally we confirm the finiteness result for the special case of the hyperkähler manifold $$K^{[2]}$$ K [ 2 ] .

Mapping class group representations from Drinfeld doubles of finite groups

We investigate representations of mapping class groups of surfaces that arise from the untwisted Drinfeld double of a finite group [Formula: see text], focusing on surfaces without marked points or with one marked point. We obtain concrete descriptions of such representations in terms of finite group data. This allows us to establish various properties of these representations. In particular, we show that they have finite images, and that for surfaces of genus at least [Formula: see text] their restriction to the Torelli group is non-trivial if and only if [Formula: see text] is non-abelian.

The cohomology of Torelli groups is algebraic

The Torelli group of $W_g = \#^g S^n \times S^n$ is the group of diffeomorphisms of $W_g$ fixing a disc that act trivially on $H_n(W_g;\mathbb{Z} )$ . The rational cohomology groups of the Torelli group are representations of an arithmetic subgroup of $\text{Sp}_{2g}(\mathbb{Z} )$ or $\text{O}_{g,g}(\mathbb{Z} )$ . In this article we prove that for $2n \geq 6$ and $g \geq 2$ , they are in fact algebraic representations. Combined with previous work, this determines the rational cohomology of the Torelli group in a stable range. We further prove that the classifying space of the Torelli group is nilpotent.

Johnson–Levine homomorphisms and the tree reduction of the LMO functor

Let $\mathcal{M}$ denote the mapping class group of Σ, a compact connected oriented surface with one boundary component. The action of $\mathcal{M}$ on the nilpotent quotients of π1(Σ) allows to define the so-called Johnson filtration and the Johnson homomorphisms. J. Levine introduced a new filtration of $\mathcal{M}$ , called the Lagrangian filtration. He also introduced a version of the Johnson homomorphisms for this new filtration. The first term of the Lagrangian filtration is the Lagrangian mapping class group, whose definition involves a handlebody bounded by Σ, and which contains the Torelli group. These constructions extend in a natural way to the monoid of homology cobordisms. Besides, D. Cheptea, K. Habiro and G. Massuyeau constructed a functorial extension of the LMO invariant, called the LMO functor, which takes values in a category of diagrams. In this paper we give a topological interpretation of the upper part of the tree reduction of the LMO functor in terms of the homomorphisms defined by J. Levine for the Lagrangian mapping class group. We also compare the Johnson filtration with the filtration introduced by J. Levine.