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arXiv · 0904.0594

A family of pseudo-Anosov braids with small dilatation

Eriko Hironaka·Eiko Kin
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Abstract

This paper describes a family of pseudo-Anosov braids with small dilatation. The smallest dilatations occurring for braids with 3, 4 and 5 strands appear in this family. A pseudo-Anosov braid with 2g+1 strands determines a hyperelliptic mapping class with the same dilatation on a genus-g surface. Penner showed that logarithms of least dilatations of pseudo-Anosov maps on a genus-g surface grow asymptotically with the genus like 1/g, and gave explicit examples of mapping classes with dilatations bounded above by log 11/g. Bauer later improved this bound to log 6/g. The braids in this paper give rise to mapping classes with dilatations bounded above by log(2+sqrt(3))/g. They show that least dilatations for hyperelliptic mapping classes have the same asymptotic behavior as for general mapping classes on genus-g surfaces.

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Eriko Hironaka, Eiko Kin. 2009-04-03. A family of pseudo-Anosov braids with small dilatation. https://doi.org/10.2140/agt.2006.6.699

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