- Series
- Geometry Topology Student Seminar
- Time
- Wednesday, February 1, 2017 - 2:05pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
- Location
- Skiles 006
- Speaker
- Justin Lanier – Georgia Tech – http://people.math.gatech.edu/~jlanier8/
- Organizer
- Justin Lanier
Wajnryb showed that the mapping class group of a surface can be generated by two elements, each given as a product of Dehn twists. We will discuss a follow-up paper by Korkmaz, "Generating the surface mapping class group by two elements." Korkmaz shows that one of the generators may be taken to be a single Dehn twist instead. He then uses his construction to further prove the striking fact that the two generators can be taken to be periodic elements, each of order 4g+2, where g is the genus of the surface.