Paper detail

Small dilatation pseudo-Anosov mapping classes coming from the simplest hyperbolic braid

In this paper we study the minimum dilatation pseudo-Anosov mapping classes coming from fibrations over the circle of a single 3-manifold, the mapping torus for the "simplest pseudo-Anosov braid". The dilatations that arise include the minimum dilatations for orientable mapping classes for genus g=2,3,4,5,8 as well as Lanneau and Thiffeault's conjectural minima for orientable mapping classes, when g = 2,4 (mod 6). Our examples also show that the minimum dilatation for orientable mapping classes is strictly greater than the minimum dilatation for non-orientable ones when g = 4,6,8.