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A chord diagrammatic presentation of the mapping class group of a once bordered surface

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Abstract

The Ptolemy groupoid is a combinatorial groupoid generated by elementary moves on marked trivalent fatgraphs with three types of relations. Through the fatgraph decomposition of Teichmüller space, the Ptolemy groupoid is a mapping class group equivariant subgroupoid of the fundamental path groupoid of Teichmüller space with a discrete set objects. In particular, it leads to an infinite, but combinatorially simple, presentation of the mapping class group of an orientable surface. In this note, we give a presentation of a full mapping class group equivariant subgroupoid of the Ptolemy groupoid of an orientable surface with one boundary component in terms of marked linear chord diagrams, with chord slides as generators and five types of relations. We also introduce a dual version of this presentation which has advantages for certain applications, one of which is given.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, Aarhus University, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Alex James Bene

  2. Department of Mathematics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Alex James Bene

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  1. Alex James Bene
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Correspondence to Alex James Bene.

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Bene, A.J. A chord diagrammatic presentation of the mapping class group of a once bordered surface. Geom Dedicata 144, 171–190 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10711-009-9395-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10711-009-9395-9

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