Top weight cohomology of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces and handlebodies
Louis Hainaut
The University of Chicago, Chicago, USADan Petersen
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract
We show that a certain locus inside the moduli space of hyperbolic surfaces, given by surfaces with “sufficiently many” short geodesics, is a classifying space of the handlebody mapping class group. A consequence of the construction is that the top weight cohomology of , studied by Chan–Galatius–Payne, maps injectively into the cohomology of the handlebody mapping class group.
Cite this article
Louis Hainaut, Dan Petersen, Top weight cohomology of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces and handlebodies. J. Eur. Math. Soc. (2025), published online first
DOI 10.4171/JEMS/1623