Generalized Johnson homomorphisms for extended N-series

Abstract The Johnson filtration of the mapping class group of a compact, oriented surface is the descending series consisting of the kernels of the actions on the nilpotent quotients of the fundamental group of the surface. Each term of the Johnson filtration admits a Johnson homomorphism, whose kernel is the next term in the filtration. In this paper, we consider a general situation where a group acts on a group with a filtration called an extended N-series . We develop a theory of Johnson homomorphisms in this general setting, including many known variants of the original Johnson homomorphisms as well as several new variants.