On the topological type of anticonformal square roots of automorphisms of Riemann surfaces (Q1910154)

In the study of automorphisms of Riemann surfaces a first step is the classification under topological conjugation. If the automorphism is conformal such classification is well-known. If we have an anticonformal automorphism its square is conformal and a natural question is how much information provides the conformal square in order to classify by topological conjugation the anticonformal automorphism. In other words which are the topological types of anticonformal automorphisms which are square roots of a conformal one. In string theory this question is interesting, too. The author gives a complete answer to the above question. Let \(g_1\) and \(g_2\) be two anticonformal automorphisms of a Riemann surface \(X\) and \(p_i: X\to X/g_i\), \(i= 1,2\) denote the natural projections. If \(g^2_1= g^2_2\) and of odd order then \(g_1\) and \(g_2\) are topologically equivalent if \(X/g_1\) and \(X/g_2\) are homeomorphic and the action of \(g_1\) on \(p^{- 1}_1(\partial X/g_1)\) is topologically equivalent to the action of \(g_2\) on \(p^{- 1}_2(\partial X/g_2)\). Examples of the necessity of the two conditions are also given. Surprisingly it is proved that all the square roots of a conformal automorphism of even order are topologically equivalent. Remark that there exist examples of Riemann surfaces having topologically equivalent automorphisms \(f_1\) and \(f_2\) of even order and such that there exist anticonformal automorphisms \(g_1\) and \(g_2\) of different topological type with \(g^2_1= f_1\) and \(g^2_2= f_2\). Finally, the obtained results are applied in the study of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. A funny consequence of such a study is the following: if we have a Riemann surface with two anticonformal automorphisms of order four, without fixed points, then such automorphisms are topologically conjugate with probability almost one.