Roots of Dehn twists about separating curves

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Publication:2873595




Abstract: Let C be a curve in a closed orientable surface F of genus ggeq2 that separates F into subsurfaces widetildeFi of genera gi, for i=1,2. We study the set of roots in Mod(F) of the Dehn twist tC about C. All roots arise from pairs of Cni-actions on the widetildeFi, where n=lcm(n1,n2) is the degree of the root, that satisfy a certain compatibility condition. The Cni actions are of a kind that we call nestled actions, and we classify them using tuples that we call data sets. The compatibility condition can be expressed by a simple formula, allowing a classification of all roots of tC by compatible pairs of data sets. We use these data set pairs to classify all roots for g=2 and g=3. We show that there is always a root of degree at least 2g2+2g, while nleq4g2+2g. We also give some additional applications.









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