Finiteness and Torelli spaces

Abstract

Torelli space (in genus g) is the moduli space of compact Riemann surfaces of genus g together with a symplectic basis of their first homology group. It is the quotient of the genus g Teichmuller space by the Torelli group T_g and is a model of the classifying space of T_g. It is known that almost all T_g are not finite complexes. The goal of this note is to present a suite of problems designed to probe the infinite topology of Torelli spaces. Some background is given and a few new results are proved.