Double Johnson Filtrations for Mapping Class Groups

Abstract

We first develop a general theory of Johnson filtrations and Johnson homomorphisms for a group $G$ acting on another group $K$ equipped with a filtration indexed by a good ordered commutative monoid. Then, specializing it to the case where the monoid is the additive monoid $\mathbb{N}^2$ of pairs on nonnegative integers, we obtain a theory of double Johnson filtrations and homomorphisms. We apply this theory to the mapping class group $\mathcal{M}$ of a surface $\Sigma_{g,1}$ with one boundary component, equipped with the normal subgroups $\bar{X}$, $\bar{Y}$ of $\pi_1(\Sigma_{g,1})$ associated to a standard Heegaard splitting of the $3$-sphere. We also consider the case where the group $G$ is the automorphism group of a free group.