Decorated marked surfaces: spherical twists versus braid twists

Understand

We are interested in the 3-Calabi-Yau categories $\mathcal{D}$ arising from quivers with potential associated to a triangulated marked surface $\mathbf{S}$ (without punctures).

• We prove that the spherical twist group ST of $\mathcal{D}$ is isomorphic to a subgroup (generated by braid twists) of the mapping class group of the decorated marked surface $\mathbf{S}_{\bigtriangleup}$.
• Here $\mathbf{S}_{\bigtriangleup}$ is the surface obtained from $\mathbf{S}$ by decorating with a set of decorated points, where the number of points equals the number of triangles in any triangulations of $\mathbf{S}$.
• For instance, when $\mathbf{S}$ is an annulus, the result implies the corresponding spaces of stability conditions on $\mathcal{D}$ is contractible.