Automorphism groups of pseudo-real Riemann surfaces of low genus (Q2440488)

Riemann surfaces of genus \(g \geq 2\) have a finite group of automorphisms. This group can be viewed allowing the existence of anticonformal mappings, or restricting to the case of only conformal automorphisms, and the group is called \(G\) and \(G^+\), respectively. The knowledge of \(G^+\) is easier than that of \(G\), and useful for getting the latter. The authors consider the full group \(G\) and study the pseudo-real surfaces which are those having anticonformal automorphisms but no anticonformal involution. They obtain their automorphism group as well as the topological classification of all possible actions, for \(g = 2\), \(3\) and \(4\). For genus \(2\), the group \(G\) is the cyclic group \(C_4\), and for genus \(3\) it can be \(C_4\) or \(C_4 \times C_2\), in each case with just one topological equivalence class. Quite interestingly, the study of genus \(4\) is much more involved, and there appear three automorphism groups, \(C_4\), \(C_8\) and the Fröbenius group of order \(20\). Besides there are two topologically different actions of \(C_4\). Finally these results are used to determine the connectedness of the space of these pseudo-real Riemann surfaces. It is connected for \(g = 2\) and for \(g = 3\), and has three connected components for \(g = 4\).