Rank-1 phenomena for mapping class groups (Q1847806)

Drawing upon a wide variety of topological and algebraic methods, and many results from the literature, the authors prove a number of different results about the mapping class group \(\Gamma_{g,m}\) of an orientable surface of genus \(g\) with \(m\) punctures. First, every Dehn twist \(t\) has linear growth, which means that there is a constant \(c\) so that the length of \(t^n\) in the word metric on \(\Gamma_{g,m}\) is greater than \(c|n|\). Combined with known results, this shows that every element of infinite order in \(\Gamma_{g,m}\) has linear growth. A second result is that \(\Gamma_g\) (\(=\Gamma_{g,0}\)) is not boundedly generated, which means that there is no finite set of elements \(a_1,\dots,a_n\) so that every element of \(\Gamma_g\) can be written in the form \(a_1^{m_1}\cdots a_n^{m_n}\). This is a consequence of a stronger result, which says that for every prime \(p\), \(\Gamma_g\) has a subgroup of finite index whose pro-\(p\) completion is not a \(p\)-adic analytic group (this is also proven for the automorphism and outer automorphism groups of free groups). It implies that the profinite completion of \(\Gamma_g\) is not boundedly generated as a profinite group. Finally, they prove that no finite index subgroup of \(\Gamma_g\), \(g\geq 2\), has a faithful representation into \(\text{GL}(n,\mathbb{C})\) for \(n<2\sqrt{g-1}\). The authors explain that many of these results give properties shared with arithmetic lattices in semisimple Lie groups of real rank \(1\). In contrast, other known properties of the mapping class groups are in common with lattices in groups of rank greater than~\(1\).