Schottky uniformizations of symmetries (Q2845575)

Let \(S\) be a closed Riemann surface of genus \(g\). The surface \(S\) is said symmetric if it admits an anti-conformal automorphism of order two, \(\tau:S\rightarrow S\), called a symmetry of \(S\). If the symmetry has fixed points it is called a reflection, otherwise it is called an imaginary reflection. The quotient space \(S/\langle\tau\rangle\) is a compact Klein surface, possibly bordered.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEA uniformization of \(S\) is a triple \((\Delta, \Gamma, P:\Delta \rightarrow S)\), where \(\Delta\) is a planar Riemann surface, \(\Gamma\) is an finitely generated group of conformal automorphisms of \(\Delta\), acting freely and discontinuously on it, and \(P: \Delta\rightarrow S\) is a regular covering map with \(\Gamma\) as its deck group. The collection of uniformizations of \(S\) is partially ordered. The lowest uniformizations are given when \(\Gamma\) is a Schottky group. NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINENEWLINE In the paper under review, the authors give a structural picture of extended Schottky groups in terms of Klein-Maskit's combination theorem and some basic extended Schottky groups. In the main theorem of the paper, they prove that an extended Schottky group can be constructed as the free product of basic extended Schottky groups of five types: real Schottky groups, and cyclic groups generated by reflections, imaginary reflections, glide-reflections, or loxodromic transformations. They also give the rank of the obtained extended Schottky group in terms of the ranks of the real Schottky groups and the number of groups from each type. NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINENEWLINE The authors study extended Schottky groups as subgroups of extended Kleinian groups. They obtain an upper bound for the number of topologically different extended groups of rank \(g\). They also study the algebraic structure of extended Schottky groups and their uniformized orbifolds. Finally, they connect their results with symmetries of handlebodies. In particular, they give alternative arguments to obtain the results by \textit{J. Kalliongis} and \textit{D. McCullough} in [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 348, No. 5, 1739--1755 (1996; Zbl 0861.57019)].NEWLINENEWLINESeveral examples and some nice pictures are provided in the paper, which help to understand the geometric procedures.