Abel–Jacobi map and curvature of the pulled back metric

Let [Formula: see text] be a compact connected Riemann surface of genus at least two. The Abel–Jacobi map [Formula: see text] is an embedding if [Formula: see text] is less than the gonality of [Formula: see text]. We investigate the curvature of the pull-back, by [Formula: see text], of the flat metric on [Formula: see text]. In particular, we show that when [Formula: see text], the curvature is strictly negative everywhere if [Formula: see text] is not hyperelliptic, and when [Formula: see text] is hyperelliptic, the curvature is nonpositive with vanishing exactly on the points of [Formula: see text] fixed by the hyperelliptic involution.

The vanishing cycles of curves in toric surfaces II

We resume the study initiated in [R. Crétois and L. Lang, The vanishing cycles of curves in toric surfaces, I, preprint (2017), arXiv:1701.00608]. For a generic curve [Formula: see text] in an ample linear system [Formula: see text] on a toric surface [Formula: see text], a vanishing cycle of [Formula: see text] is an isotopy class of simple closed curve that can be contracted to a point along a degeneration of [Formula: see text] to a nodal curve in [Formula: see text]. The obstructions that prevent a simple closed curve in [Formula: see text] from being a vanishing cycle are encoded by the adjoint line bundle [Formula: see text]. In this paper, we consider the linear systems carrying the two simplest types of obstruction. Geometrically, these obstructions manifest on [Formula: see text] respectively as an hyperelliptic involution and as a spin structure. In both cases, we determine all the vanishing cycles by investigating the associated monodromy maps, whose target space is the mapping class group [Formula: see text]. We show that the image of the monodromy is the subgroup of [Formula: see text] preserving respectively the hyperelliptic involution and the spin structure. The results obtained here support Conjecture [Formula: see text] in [R. Crétois and L. Lang, The vanishing cycles of curves in toric surfaces, I, preprint (2017), arXiv:1701.00608] aiming to describe all the vanishing cycles for any pair [Formula: see text].

Categorical representations of the modular group

Actions of the modular group on categories are constructed. A hyperelliptic involution is used to convert the braid representations underlying Khovanov homology to representations of the modular group.

Factoring in the hyperelliptic Torelli group

The hyperelliptic Torelli group is the subgroup of the mapping class group consisting of elements that act trivially on the homology of the surface and that also commute with some fixed hyperelliptic involution. Putman and the authors proved that this group is generated by Dehn twists about separating curves fixed by the hyperelliptic involution. In this paper, we introduce an algorithmic approach to factoring a wide class of elements of the hyperelliptic Torelli group into such Dehn twists, and apply our methods to several basic types of elements. As one consequence, we answer an old question of Dennis Johnson.

FOURIER EXPANSIONS WITH MODULAR FORM COEFFICIENTS

In this paper, we study the Fourier expansion where the coefficients are given as the evaluation of a sequence of modular forms at a fixed point in the upper half-plane. We show that for prime levels l for which the modular curve X0(l) is hyperelliptic (with hyperelliptic involution of the Atkin–Lehner type) then one can choose a sequence of weight k (any even integer) forms so that the resulting Fourier expansion is itself a meromorphic modular form of weight 2-k. These sequences have many interesting properties, for instance, the sequence of their first nonzero next-to-leading coefficient is equal to the terms in the Fourier expansion of a certain weight 2-k form. The results in the paper generalizes earlier work by Asai, Kaneko, and Ninomiya (for level one), and Ahlgren (for the cases where X0(l) has genus zero).

ON THE CONNECTEDNESS OF THE LOCUS OF REAL ELLIPTIC-HYPERELLIPTIC RIEMANN SURFACES

A Riemann surface X of genus g > 2 is elliptic-hyperelliptic if it admits a conformal involution h such that the orbit space X/〈h〉 has genus one. This elliptic-hyperelliptic involution h is unique for g > 5 [1]. In a previous article [3], we established the non-connectedness of the subspace [Formula: see text] of real elliptic-hyperelliptic algebraic curves in the moduli space [Formula: see text] of Riemann surfaces of genus g, when g is even and > 5. In this paper we improve this result and give a complete answer to the connectedness problem of the space [Formula: see text] of real elliptic-hyperelliptic surfaces of genus > 5: we show that [Formula: see text] is connected if g is odd and has exactly two connected components if g is even; in both cases the closure [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] in the compactified moduli space [Formula: see text] is connected.

A combinatorial formula for Earle's twisted 1-cocycle on the mapping class group

We present a formula expressing Earle's twisted 1-cocycle on the mapping class group of a closed oriented surface of genus ≥ 2 relative to a fixed base point, with coefficients in the first homology group of the surface. For this purpose we compare it with Morita's twisted 1-cocycle which is combinatorial. The key is the computation of these cocycles on a particular element of the mapping class group, which is topologically a hyperelliptic involution.