Mapping classes are almost determined by their finite quotient actions

Abstract

Given any connected compact orientable surface, a pair of mapping classes is said to be procongruently conjugate if it induces a conjugate pair of outer automophisms on the profinite completion of the fundamental group of the surface. For example, this occurs if they induce conjugate outer automorphisms on every characteristic finite quotient of the fundamental group. In this paper, it is shown that every procongruent conjugacy class of mapping classes, as a subset of the surface mapping class group, is the disjoint union of at most finitely many conjugacy classes of mapping classes. For any pseudo-Anosov mapping class of a connected closed orientable surface, several topological features are confirmed to depend only on the procongurent conjugacy class of the mapping class, including the stretching factor, the topological type of the prong singularities, the transverse orientability of the invariant foliations, and the isomorphism type of the symplectic Floer homology.