Motion groupoids and mapping class groupoids

TL;DR

This paper introduces motion and mapping class groupoids for manifolds with subsets, generalizing classical groups, and establishes conditions under which they are isomorphic, with applications to high-dimensional cubes.

Contribution

It constructs and relates motion groupoids and mapping class groupoids for pairs of manifolds and subsets, extending classical concepts and providing explicit isomorphisms.

Findings

The functor between motion and mapping class groupoids is full and faithful under certain conditions.

The constructions recover classical groups in specific cases like the n-cube.

The congruence relation can be described via level preserving isotopy on trajectories.

Abstract

Here $\underline{M}$ denotes a pair $(M,A)$ of a manifold and a subset (e.g. $A=\partial M$ or $A=\emptyset$). We construct for each $\underline{M}$ its motion groupoid $\mathrm{Mot}_{\underline{M}}$, whose object set is the power set $ {\mathcal P} M$ of $M$, and whose morphisms are certain equivalence classes of continuous flows of the `ambient space' $M$, that fix $A$, acting on ${\mathcal P} M$. These groupoids generalise the classical definition of a motion group associated to a manifold $M$ and a submanifold $N$, which can be recovered by considering the automorphisms in $\mathrm{Mot}_{\underline{M}}$ of $N\in {\mathcal P} M$. We also construct the mapping class groupoid $\mathrm{MCG}_{\underline{M}}$ associated to a pair $\underline{M}$ with the same object class, whose morphisms are now equivalence classes of homeomorphisms of $M$, that fix $A$. We recover the classical definition of the mapping class group of a pair by taking automorphisms at the appropriate object. For each pair $\underline{M}$ we explicitly construct a functor $\mathsf{F}\colon \mathrm{Mot}_{\underline{M}} \to \mathrm{MCG}_{\underline{M}}$, which is the identity on objects, and prove that this is full and faithful, and hence an isomorphism, if $\pi_0$ and $\pi_1$ of the appropriate space of self-homeomorphisms of $M$ are trivial. In particular, we have an isomorphism in the physically important case $\underline{M}=([0,1]^n, \partial [0,1]^n)$, for any $n\in \mathbb{N}$. We show that the congruence relation used in the construction $\mathrm{Mot}_{\underline{M}}$ can be formulated entirely in terms of a level preserving isotopy relation on the trajectories of objects under flows -- worldlines (e.g. monotonic `tangles'). We examine several explicit examples of $\mathrm{Mot}_{\underline{M}}$ and $\mathrm{MCG}_{\underline{M}}$ demonstrating the utility of the constructions.