Positive factorizations of pseudoperiodic homeomorphisms

Abstract

We generalize a classical result concerning smooth germs of surfaces, by proving that monodromies on links of isolated complex surface singularities associated with reduced holomorphic map germs admit a positive factorization. As a consequence of this and a topological characterization of these monodromies by Anne Pichon, we conclude that a pseudoperiodic homeomorphism on an oriented surface with boundary with positive fractional Dehn twist coefficients and screw numbers, admits a positive factorization. We use the main theorem to give a sufficiency criterion for certain pseudoperiodic homeomorphisms with negative screw numbers to admit a positive factorization.