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1. The Ceresa class: tropical, topological, and algebraic

   Corey, Daniel; Ellenberg, Jordan; Li, Wanlin (September 2020, ArXivorg)

   null (Ed.)

   The Ceresa cycle is an algebraic cycle attached to a smooth algebraic curve with a marked point, which is trivial when the curve is hyperelliptic with a marked Weierstrass point. The image of the Ceresa cycle under a certain cycle class map provides a class in étale cohomology called the Ceresa class. Describing the Ceresa class explicitly for non-hyperelliptic curves is in general not easy. We present a "combinatorialization" of this problem, explaining how to define a Ceresa class for a tropical algebraic curve, and also for a topological surface endowed with a multiset of commuting Dehn twists (where it is related to the Morita cocycle on the mapping class group). We explain how these are related to the Ceresa class of a smooth algebraic curve over ℂ((t)), and show that the Ceresa class in each of these settings is torsion. 

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2. Monodromy of Kodaira fibrations of genus 3

   https://doi.org/10.1002/mana.202000189  

   Flapan, Laure (November 2022, Mathematische Nachrichten)

   Abstract A Kodaira fibration is a non‐isotrivial fibration from a smooth algebraic surfaceSto a smooth algebraic curveBsuch that all fibers are smooth algebraic curves of genusg. Such fibrations arise as complete curves inside the moduli space of genusgalgebraic curves. We investigate here the possible connected monodromy groups of a Kodaira fibration in the case and classify which such groups can arise from a Kodaira fibration obtained as a general complete intersection curve inside a subvariety of parametrizing curves whose Jacobians have extra endomorphisms. 

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3. Carathéodory's metrics on Teichmüller spaces and L-shaped pillowcases. Duke Math. J. 167 (2018), no. 3, 497–535.

   Makovic, Vladimir (July 2018, Duke Math. J)

   One of the most important results in Teichmüller theory is Royden’s theorem, which says that the Teichmüller and Kobayashi metrics agree on the Teichmüller space of a given closed Riemann surface. The problem that remained open is whether the Carathéodory metric agrees with the Teichmüller metric as well. In this article, we prove that these two metrics disagree on each Teichmüller space of a closed surface of genus g≥2. The main step is to establish a criterion to decide when the Teichmüller and Carathéodory metrics agree on the Teichmüller disk corresponding to a rational Jenkins–Strebel differential. 

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4. THE DYNAMICAL MORDELL–LANG CONJECTURE FOR ENDOMORPHISMS OF SEMIABELIAN VARIETIES DEFINED OVER FIELDS OF POSITIVE CHARACTERISTIC

   https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474748019000318  

   Corvaja, Pietro; Ghioca, Dragos; Scanlon, Thomas; Zannier, Umberto (March 2021, Journal of the Institute of Mathematics of Jussieu)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Let $$K$$ be an algebraically closed field of prime characteristic $$p$$ , let $$X$$ be a semiabelian variety defined over a finite subfield of $$K$$ , let $$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}:X\longrightarrow X$$ be a regular self-map defined over $$K$$ , let $$V\subset X$$ be a subvariety defined over $$K$$ , and let $$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}\in X(K)$$ . The dynamical Mordell–Lang conjecture in characteristic $$p$$ predicts that the set $$S=\{n\in \mathbb{N}:\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}^{n}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})\in V\}$$ is a union of finitely many arithmetic progressions, along with finitely many $$p$$ -sets, which are sets of the form $$\{\sum _{i=1}^{m}c_{i}p^{k_{i}n_{i}}:n_{i}\in \mathbb{N}\}$$ for some $$m\in \mathbb{N}$$ , some rational numbers $$c_{i}$$ and some non-negative integers $$k_{i}$$ . We prove that this conjecture is equivalent with some difficult diophantine problem in characteristic 0. In the case $$X$$ is an algebraic torus, we can prove the conjecture in two cases: either when $$\dim (V)\leqslant 2$$ , or when no iterate of $$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}$$ is a group endomorphism which induces the action of a power of the Frobenius on a positive dimensional algebraic subgroup of $$X$$ . We end by proving that Vojta’s conjecture implies the dynamical Mordell–Lang conjecture for tori with no restriction. 

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5. Stable Strata of Geodesics in Outer Space

   https://doi.org/10.1093/imrn/rnx269  

   Algom-Kfir, Yael; Kapovich, Ilya; Pfaff, Catherine (January 2018, International Mathematics Research Notices)

   Abstract In this article, we propose an Outer space analog for the principal stratum of the unit tangent bundle to the Teichmüller space $${\mathcal{T}}(S)$$ of a closed hyperbolic surface $$S$$. More specifically, we focus on properties of the geodesics in Teichmüller space determined by the principal stratum. We show that the analogous Outer space “principal” periodic geodesics share certain stability properties with the principal stratum geodesics of Teichmüller space. We also show that the stratification of periodic geodesics in Outer space exhibits some new pathological phenomena not present in the Teichmüller space context. 

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