Artin braid groups and spin structures

Abstract

We study the action of the Artin braid group B_{2g+2} on the set of spin structures on a hyperelliptic curve of genus g, which reduces to that of the symmetric group. It has been already described in terms of the classical theory of Riemann surfaces. In this paper, we compute the S_{2g+2}-orbits of the spin structures of genus $g$ and the isotropy group G_i of each orbit in a purely combinatorial way.