The co-Hopfian property of the Johnson kernel and the Torelli group

Abstract

For all but finitely many compact orientable surfaces, we show that any superinjective map from the complex of separating curves into itself is induced by an element of the extended mapping class group. We apply this result to proving that any finite index subgroup of the Johnson kernel is co-Hopfian. Analogous properties are shown for the Torelli complex and the Torelli group.