Homeomorphic subsurfaces and the omnipresent arcs (Q2077199)

The past decade has witnessed a burgeoning interest in the study of mapping class groups of infinite type surfaces (see [\textit{J. Aramayona} and \textit{N. G. Vlamis}, in: In the tradition of Thurston. Geometry and topology. Cham: Springer. 459--496 (2020; Zbl 1479.57037)] and references therein). The paper under review analyzes several characteristics of embedded arcs on such surfaces. To begin with, it provides a very fundamental characterization for infinite type surfaces. In particular, it is established that an infinite type surface \(\Sigma\) is characterized by the existence of an essential separating proper arc \(\alpha\) such that one component of \(\Sigma \setminus \alpha\) (called a \textit{one-cut homeomorphic subsurface}) is homeomorphic to \(\Sigma\). This characterization also provides for a consistent notion of essential arcs on \(\Sigma\) called \textit{omnipresent arcs}, which are arcs joining distinct ends of \(\Sigma\) and intersecting every one-cut homeomorphic subsurface. Let \(\mathrm{MCG}(\Sigma)\) be the mapping class group of the infinite type surface \(\Sigma\). In a work of \textit{K. Mann} and \textit{K. Rafi} [``Large scale geometry of big mapping class groups'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1912.10914}] on the large scale (coarse) geometry of \(\mathrm{MCG}(\Sigma)\), the authors have introduced a class of \textit{stable} surfaces whose ends satisfy a certain stability condition. In this paper, it is shown that an arc \(\alpha\) in a stable surface \(\Sigma\) is omnipresent if and only if both ends of \(\alpha\) have a finite \(\mathrm{MCG}(\Sigma)\) orbit (i.e., \textit{finite-orbit} ends). Furthermore, the authors consider the \textit{ominipresent arc graph} \(\Omega(\Sigma)\) which is the subgraph of the arc graph \(\mathcal{A}(\Sigma)\) spanned by omnipresent arcs. As the final main result, it is proven that if a stable surface \(\Sigma\) has at least three finite-orbit ends, then \(\Omega(\Sigma)\) is a connected \(\delta\)-hyperbolic graph on which \(\mathrm{MCG}(\Sigma)\) acts with unbounded orbits, where the choice of \(\delta\) is independent of \(\Sigma\). It is remarked that the graph \(\Omega(\Sigma)\) depends only on the surface \(\Sigma\) (as a whole) unlike the graphs defined in [\textit{M. G. Durham} et al., Ann. Inst. Fourier 68, No. 6, 2581--2612 (2018; Zbl 1416.57013)], which were based on a specific choice of subsets of space of ends of \(\Sigma\). Thus, \(\Omega(\Sigma)\) appears to be a viable analog of the curve complex in the setting of stable infinite type surfaces.