Period Math Hung DOI 10.1007/s10998-017-0210-3 Roots of crosscap slides and crosscap transpositions Anna Parlak1 · Michał Stukow1 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication Abstract Let Ng denote a closed nonorientable surface of genus g.Forg ≥ 2 the mapping class group M(Ng) is generated by Dehn twists and one crosscap slide (Y -homeomorphism) or by Dehn twists and a crosscap transposition. Margalit and Schleimer observed that Dehn twists on orientable surfaces have nontrivial roots. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of roots of crosscap slides and crosscap transpositions. Keywords Mapping class group · Nonorientable surface · Punctured sphere · Elementary braid · Crosscap slide · Crosscap transposition Mathematics Subject Classification 57N05 · 20F38 · 57M99 1 Introduction n Let Ng,s be a connected nonorientable surface of genus g with s boundary components and n punctures, that is a surface obtained from a connected sum of g projective planes Ng by removing s open disks and specifying the set ={p1,...,pn} of n distinguished points in the interior of Ng.Ifs or/and n equals zero, we omit it from notation. The mapping class M( n ) : n → n group Ng,s consists of isotopy classes of self-homeomorphisms h Ng,s Ng,s fixing () = M( n ) boundary components pointwise and such that h . The mapping class group Sg,s of an orientable surface is defined analogously, but we consider only orientation-preserving Both authors are supported by Grant 2015/17/B/ST1/03235 of National Science Centre, Poland. B Michał Stukow
[email protected] Anna Parlak
[email protected] 1 Institute of Mathematics, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, University of Gda´nsk, 80-308 Gda´nsk, Poland 123 A.