Arithmetic quotients of the mapping class group

Publication date 16 December 2015

Abstract: To every

Q

-irreducible representation

r

of a finite group

H

, there corresponds a simple factor

A

of

Q [H]

with an involution

a u

. To this pair

(A, a u)

, we associate an arithmetic group

O m e g a

consisting of all

(2 g - 2) i m e s (2 g - 2)

matrices over a natural order of

A^{o p}

which preserve a natural skew-Hermitian sesquilinear form on

A^{2 g - 2}

. We show that if

H

is generated by less than

g

elements, then

O m e g a

is a virtual quotient of the mapping class group

M o d (S i g m a_{g})

, i.e. a finite index subgroup of

O m e g a

is a quotient of a finite index subgroup of

M o d (S i g m a_{g})

. This shows that the mapping class group has a rich family of arithmetic quotients (and "Torelli subgroups") for which the classical quotient

S p (2 g, Z)

is just a first case in a list, the case corresponding to the trivial group

H

and the trivial representation. Other pairs of

H

and

r

give rise to many new arithmetic quotients of

M o d (S i g m a_{g})

which are defined over various (subfields of) cyclotomic fields and are of type

S p (2 m), S O (2 m, 2 m),

and

S U (m, m)

for arbitrarily large

m

.

Recommendations

Cites work

Cited in

(32)

This page was built for publication: Arithmetic quotients of the mapping class group