arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Caleb Partin.
We prove that in the non-orientable setting, the minimal stretch factor of a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism of a surface of genus $g$ with a fixed number of punctures is asymptotically on the order of $\frac{1}{g}$. Our result adapts the work of Yazdi to non-orientable surfaces. We include the details of Thurston's theory of fibered faces for non-orientable 3-manifolds.
Totally symmetric sets are a recently introduced tool for studying homomorphisms between groups. In this paper, we give full classifications of totally symmetric sets in certain families of groups and bound their sizes in others. As a consequence, we derive restrictions on possible homomorphisms between these groups. One sample application of our results is that any homomorphism of a braid group to a direct product of solvable groups must have cyclic image.
We derive a lower bound on the size of finite non-cyclic quotients of the braid group that is superexponential in the number of strands. We also derive a similar lower bound for nontrivial finite quotients of the commutator subgroup of the braid group.