Infinitesimal Morita homomorphisms and the tree-level of the LMO invariant

Gwenael Massuyeau

Published 2008-09-26, updated 2011-12-13Version 4

Let S be a compact connected oriented surface with one boundary component, and let P be the fundamental group of S. The Johnson filtration is a decreasing sequence of subgroups of the Torelli group of S, whose k-th term consists of the self-homeomorphisms of S that act trivially at the level of the k-th nilpotent quotient of P. Morita defined a homomorphism from the k-th term of the Johnson filtration to the third homology group of the k-th nilpotent quotient of P. In this paper, we replace groups by their Malcev Lie algebras and we study the "infinitesimal" version of the k-th Morita homomorphism, which is shown to correspond to the original version by a canonical isomorphism. We provide a diagrammatic description of the k-th infinitesimal Morita homomorphism and, given an expansion of the free group P that is "symplectic" in some sense, we show how to compute it from Kawazumi's "total Johnson map". Besides, we give a topological interpretation of the full tree-reduction of the LMO homomorphism, which is a diagrammatic representation of the Torelli group derived from the Le-Murakami-Ohtsuki invariant of 3-manifolds. More precisely, a symplectic expansion of P is constructed from the LMO invariant, and it is shown that the tree-level of the LMO homomorphism is equivalent to the total Johnson map induced by this specific expansion. It follows that the k-th infinitesimal Morita homomorphism coincides with the degree [k,2k[ part of the tree-reduction of the LMO homomorphism. Our results also apply to the monoid of homology cylinders over S.