Small dilatation mapping classes coming from the simplest hyperbolic braid (Q600808)

The author studies the minimum dilatation pseudo-Anosov mapping classes coming from fibrations over the circle of a single 3-manifold, namely the mapping torus for the ``simplest pseudo-Anosov braid''. We recall that a mapping class \(\phi\) is called pseudo-Anosov if the surface has a pair of \(\phi\)-invariant, transversally measured, singular foliations on which the mapping class acts by stretching along one and contracting along the other by a constant which is called the (geometric) dilatation of \(\varphi\). The dilatations that arise include the minimum dilatations for orientable mapping classes for genus \(g = 2, 3, 4, 5, 8\) as well as Lanneau and Thiffeault's conjectural minima for orientable mapping classes, when \(g = 2, 4\pmod 6\). The examples also show that the minimum dilatation for orientable mapping classes is strictly greater than the minimum dilatation for non-orientable ones when \(g = 4, 6, 8\).