Decorated marked surfaces: spherical twists versus braid twists
  We are interested in the 3-Calabi-Yau categories $\mathcal{D}$ arising from quivers with potential associated to a triangulated marked surface $\mathbf{S}$ (without punctures). We prove that the spherical twist group ST of $\mathcal{D}$ is isomorphic to a subgroup (generated by braid twists) of the mapping class group of the decorated marked surface $\mathbf{S}_{\bigtriangleup}$. Here $\mathbf{S}_{\bigtriangleup}$ is the surface obtained from $\mathbf{S}$ by decorating with a set of decorated points, where the number of points equals the number of triangles in any triangulations of $\mathbf{S}$. For instance, when $\mathbf{S}$ is an annulus, the result implies the corresponding spaces of stability conditions on $\mathcal{D}$ is contractible. 
Yu Qiu
math.RT math.AG math.CT math.GT