Mapping class groups of covers with boundary and braid group embeddings (Q1985992)

The authors consider finite-sheeted, regular, possibly branched covering spaces of compact surfaces with boundary and they study the associated liftable and symmetric mapping class groups. They obtain a necessary and sufficient condition under which either of these subgroups coincides with the entire mapping class group of the surface. As an application, they construct infinite families of nongeometric embeddings of the braid group into mapping class groups in the sense of Wajnryb, that is, embeddings that are not the standard embedding which sends each generator to a Dehn twist. Wajnryb asked whether there are nongeometric embeddings of the braid group in a mapping class group (see [\textit{B. Wajnryb}, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 74, 115--120 (2006; Zbl 1304.57032)]). The embeddings that the authors obtain are nongeometric. They map standard braid generators to products of Dehn twists about curves forming chains of arbitrary length. As key tools, they use the Birman-Hilden theorem and the action of the mapping class group on a particular fundamental groupoid of the surface.