Automorphisms of free groups with boundaries.
Stable rational cohomology of automorphism groups of free groups and the integral cohomology of moduli spaces of graphs.
It is not known whether or not the stable rational cohomology groups H*(Aut(F);Q) always vanish (see Hatcher in [5] and Hatcher and Vogtmann in [7] where they pose the question and show that it does vanish in the first 6 dimensions). We show that either the rational cohomology does not vanish in certain dimensions, or the integral cohomology of a moduli space of pointed graphs does not stabilize in certain other dimensions. Similar results are stated for groups of outer automorphisms. This yields...
Page 1