Canonical symplectic representations for prime order conjugacy classes of the mapping-class group (Q2468540): Difference between revisions

Let \(S\) be a surface of genus greater than one. A basis of the first homology is called canonical if the induced intersection form is the standard symplectic form. A choice of such basis defines a symplectic representation of the mapping class group of \(S\). Given a conformal automorphism \(h\) of prime order there exists a special basis of the first homology for which this automorphism has a very simple form. This is called a basis adapted to \(h\). This is not a canonical basis. The main result of the paper is an algorithm to obtain the matrix representation of \(h\) with respect to a canonical basis out of the matrix representation with respect to the adapted basis. The input is a certain tuple of integers characterizing the conjugacy class of \(h\). In particular, the author obtains a characterization of prime order symplectic matrices which are images of prime order mapping classes.