Smallest nonabelian quotients of surface braid groups (Q6657461)

The Artin braid group \(B_{n}\) arises as the fundamental group of \(\mathrm{UConf}_{n}(\mathbb{D})\), the configuration space of \(n\) distinct unordered points on the open disk \(\mathbb{D}\). Similarly, for each oriented closed surface \(\Sigma_{g}\) of genus \(g\), one can define the surface braid group \(B_{n}(\Sigma_{g})=\pi_{1} \big (\mathrm{UConf}_{n}(\mathbb{D}) \big )\). In [\textit{S. Kolay}, Geom. Topol. 27, No. 6, 2479--2496 (2023; Zbl 1535.20182)], it was shown that any non-cyclic quotient of the \(n\)-strand braid group (for \(n=3\) or \(n\geq 5\)) has order at least \(n!\), and the lower bound is only achieved by post-composing the obvious map to the symmetric group \(S_{n}\) with an automorphism.\N\NThe main result in the paper under review is Theorem 1: Let \(n \geq 5\) and \(g \geq 1\). Suppose that \(G\) is a finite nonabelian quotient of \(B_{n}(\Sigma_{g})\). (a) If \(G\) is not braid-free then \(|G| \geq n!\) with equality if and only if \(G \simeq S_{n}\). (b) If \(G\) is braid-free then \(G\) is 2-step nilpotent and \(|G| \geq p^{2g+j}\), where \(p\) is the smallest prime dividing \(g+n-1\) and \(j=1\) or \(2\) according to whether \(p\) is odd or \(2\), respectively. Equality occurs if and only if either \(G \simeq \mathrm{I}(p^{j}, g)\) or \(G\simeq \mathrm{II}(p^{j}, g)\). In particular, the smallest nonnilpotent quotient of \(B_{n}(\Sigma_{g})\) is \(S_{n}\).\N\NHere \(\mathrm{I}(p^{j}, g)\) and \(\mathrm{II}(p^{j}, g)\) denote two non-isomorphic \(2\)-step nilpotent \(p\)-groups explicitly defined in the paper (see Construction 10).