The first Galois obstruction in the Johnson cokernel

Abstract

We explicitly determine the first Galois obstruction in the cokernel of the Johnson homomorphism of the mapping class group of a surface of genus $g$, for every genus $g\ge 2$. It is described as a sum of two terms which are considerably different in character. One lies in the kernel of the Enomoto-Satoh trace map, whereas the other belongs to a certain ideal which vanishes upon passage to the closed surface case.

28 pages