A construction of pseudo-Anosov braids with small normalized entropies (Q2190810)

According to the Nielsen-Thurston classification the elements of the mapping class group of a genus \(g\) surface \(\Sigma\) are one of the following types: reducible, periodic and pseudo-Anosov. For each element \(\phi\) of the mapping class group, there is a number about the dynamic complexity called entropy (resp. normalized entropy) equivalent to \(\log(\lambda(\phi))\) (resp. \(\mathrm{Ent}(\phi)=|\chi(\Sigma)|\log(\lambda(\phi))\)), when \(\phi\) is pseudo-Anosov, and \(\lambda\) denotes the dilatation. Let \(b\) be a braid in the braid group with \(n\) strands \(B_n\), then we can define an element of the mapping class group of the sphere with \(n+1\) punctures associated to \(b\) say \(\phi_b\). A braid \(b\) is called pseudo-Anosov if the associated element \(\phi_b\) is pseudo-Anosov and entropy of this braid is equivalent to the entropy (resp. normalized entropy) of the associated element, \(\log(\lambda(b))=\log(\lambda(\phi_b))\) (resp. \(\mathrm{Ent}(b)=\mathrm{Ent}(\phi_b)\)). Also one can define the minimal entropy (resp. normalized minimal entropy) of an element (and hence for a braid) and there are various researches about these, however the problem is not completely understood. In the paper under review, it is proved that there exists a sequence of pseudo-Anosov braids \(\{z_n\}\) with small normalized entropy such that \(\mathrm{Ent}(z_n)\rightarrow\mathrm{Ent}(b)\) as \(n\rightarrow \infty\) where \(b\) is a braid with permutation having a fixed point. This result is a conclusion of construction of many sequences of pseudo-Anosov braids with small normalized entropies after observing that the small normalized entropies of such braids are comparable to \(1/n\). Actually, before this result, existence of a fibered subcone \(\mathcal{C}_0\) in \(\mathcal{C}\subset\) \( H_2(M_b,\partial M_b)\), the fibered cone containing \([F_b]\) and construction of the pseudo-Anosov monodromy of a connected fiber \(F_a\) which corresponds to a primitive integral class in \(\mathcal{C_0}\) is given. Moreover, it is proved that \(F_a\) has genus \(0\). The existence of a connected fiber \(F_a\) with pseudo-Anosov monodromy for each primitive integral class in \(\mathcal{C}\) is proved by \textit{W. P. Thurston} [Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 339, 99--130 (1986; Zbl 0585.57006)]. (Here \(M_b\) is the \(3\) manifold which fibers over \(S_1\) with fiber \(F_b\) obtained from the braid \(b\)). Besides these results some applications are given such as results about the smallest entropy among skew-palindromic braids and elements of odd/even spin mapping class groups of genus \(g\) surfaces.