The mapping class group is generated by two commutators
In this paper, the authors prove that the mapping class group of any closed connected orientable surface is generated by two commutators if the genus is at least \(5\) and three commutators if the genus is \(3\) or \(4\). As the authors note, the number of commutators in the main result clearly cannot be reduced when \(g \ge 5\), and if \(g \le 2\), then the abelianization is nontrivial and thus there is no generating set of commutators. The question of whether three is the minimal number for \(g=3,4\) remains open. Because the mapping class group \(\mathrm{Mod}(\Sigma_g)\) surjects onto the symplectic group \(\mathrm{Sp}(2g,\mathbb{Z})\), this immediately implies the analogous statement for the symplectic group. This paper is straightforward and worth reading by anyone interested in mapping class groups. All the proofs are ``elementary in the sense that they are a series of checking various relations between explicit mapping class group elements. The clever part is to use three different viewpoints of the surface from which they collect up all the intermediate facts.
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