Finiteness of mapping class groups and Heegaard distance

Abstract

We prove that the mapping class group of a Heegaard splitting with a distance of at least 3 is finite. However, we have constructed a counterexample with a distance of 2 that disproves this assertion. In addition, the fact that the mapping class group of a Heegaard splitting with a distance of at most 1 is infinite, when combined with our results, provides an answer to the question of the finiteness of mapping class groups as viewed from Heegaard distance.

arXiv comment7 Pages. Comments welcome!