Abelian quotients of monoids of homology cylinders (Q2430738)

Let \(\Sigma_{g,1}\) be a compact connected oriented surface of genus \(g\) with one boundary component, and let \( \mathcal{M}_{g,1} \) denote its mapping class group, where diffeomorphisms and isotopies are required to be the identity on the boundary. A homology cylinder \((M,i_+,i_-)\) over \(\Sigma_{g,1}\) is a compact oriented \(3\)-manifold \(M\) with two embeddings \(i_+,i_-:\Sigma_{g,1}\hookrightarrow \partial M\) satisfying the following four conditions: (1) \(i_+\) is orientation-preserving and \(i_-\) is orientation-reversing; (2) \(\partial M =i_+(\Sigma_{g,1}) \cup i_-(\Sigma_{g,1}) \) and \(i_+(\Sigma_{g,1}) \cap i_-(\Sigma_{g,1})= i_+(\partial\Sigma_{g,1})= i_-(\partial\Sigma_{g,1})\); (3) \(i_+|\partial\Sigma_{g,1}= i_-|\partial\Sigma_{g,1}\); and (4) \(i_+,i_-:H_*(\Sigma_{g,1},\mathbb{Z})\rightarrow H_*(M,\mathbb{Z})\) are isomorphisms. There is a natural product operation defined on the set \(\mathcal{C}_{g,1}\) of isomorphism classes of homology cylinders over \(\Sigma_{g,1}\), which gives \(\mathcal{C}_{g,1}\) the structure of a monoid. Given diffeomorphism \(\varphi\) of \(\Sigma_{g,1}\), one constructs a homology cylinder by setting \((\Sigma_{g,1}\times [0,1],\text{id}\times 1,\varphi\times 0)\), which gives a monoid homomorphism \(\mathcal{M}_{g,1} \to \mathcal{C}_{g,1} \). The image is equal to the group of units of \(\mathcal{C}_{g,1}\). It is shown that the monoid \(\mathcal{C}_{g,1}\) and the monoid of irreducible homology cylinders are not finitely generated and have big abelian quotients. The proof for the former monoid uses the prime decomposition of \(3\)-manifolds, while that for the latter monoid employs sutured Floer homology theory.