Abstract:
I will explain how to construct an unbounded quasimorphism on the group of isotopically-trivial diffeomorphisms of a surface of positive genus. As a corollary the commutator length and fragmentation norm are both (stably) unbounded, which solves a problem of Burago--Ivanov--Polterovich. The proof uses a new hyperbolic graph on which these groups act by isometries, which is inspired by techniques from mapping class groups. This is joint work with Jonathan Bowden and Sebastian Hensel.