Homology of the family of hyperelliptic curves
The authors study in this paper the homology of a family of hyperelliptic curves. Let $D$ be the open disk in $\mathbb{C}$, $C_n$ the configuration space of $n$ distinct points in $D$, and $P = \{x_1, \dots, x_n\} \in C_n$. Then, consider \[ E_n = \{(P,z,y) \in C_n \times D \times \mathbb{C}\mid y^2 = (z-x_1) \cdots (z-x_n)\}. \] For a given $P$, the set \[ \Sigma_n = \{(z,y) \in D \times \mathbb{C}\mid y^2 = (z-x_1) \cdots (z-x_n)\} \] is a connected oriented surface with $1$ or $2$ boundary components according to $n$ be odd or even, and with genus $g = \frac{n-1}{2}$ or $\frac{n-2}{2}$ respectively. The goal of the paper is to obtain the integral homology of the space $E_n$. In order to get it, the authors use that $C_n$ is a classifying space for the braid group Br$_n$. The braid group embeds into the mapping class group of a surface of genus $g$ via Dehn twists. Then, the homology of that symplectic representation of the braid group is computed in the paper, and since the homology of the braid groups is known, a description is obtained of the homology of $E_n$. It is worth to note that the integral homology groups result to have only $2$-torsion if $n$ is odd.
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