We establish the existence of new rigidity and rationality phenomena in the theory of nonabelian group actions on the circle, and introduce tools to translate questions about the existence of actions with prescribed dynamics into finite combinatorics. A special case of our theory gives a very short new proof of Naimi's theorem (i.e. the conjecture of Jankins-Neumann) which was the last step in the classification of taut foliations of Seifert fibered spaces.

We study two actions of big mapping class groups. The first is an action by isometries on a Gromov-hyperbolic graph. The second is an action by homeomorphisms on a circle in which the vertices of the graph naturally embed.The first two parts of the paper are devoted to the definition of objects and tools needed to introduce these two actions; in particular, we define and prove the existence of equators for infinite type surfaces, we define the hyperbolic graph and the circle needed for the actions, and we describe the Gromovboundary of the graph using the embedding of its vertices in the circle.The third part focuses on some fruitful relations between the dynamics of the two actions. For example, we prove that loxodromic elements (for the first action) necessarily have rational rotation number (for the second action). In addition, we are able to construct non trivial quasimorphisms on many subgroups of big mapping class groups, even if they are not acylindrically hyperbolic.

No abstract

Abstract. Legendrian contact homology (LCH) and its associated differential graded algebra are powerful non-classical invariants of Legendrian knots. Linearization makes the LCH computationally tractable at the expense of discarding nonlinear (and noncommutative) information. To recover some of the nonlinear information while preserving computability, we introduce invariant cup and Massey products -and, more generally, an A∞ structure -on the linearized LCH. We apply the products and A∞ structure in three ways: to find infinite families of Legendrian knots that are not isotopic to their Legendrian mirrors, to reinterpret the duality theorem of the fourth author in terms of the cup product, and to recover higher-order linearizations of the LCH.

Abstract. The ray graph is a Gromov-hyperbolic graph on which the mapping class group of the plane minus a Cantor set acts by isometries. We give a description of the Gromov boundary of the ray graph in terms of cliques of long rays on the plane minus a Cantor set. As a consequence, we prove that the Gromov boundary of the ray graph is homeomorphic to a quotient of a subset of the circle.