Abelian and metabelian quotients of surface braid groups

Abstract

This paper supersedes arXiv:1106.4982. The results of previous paper have been revisited and improved and new results have been added.In this paper we study abelian and metabelian quotients of braid groups on oriented surfaces with boundary components. We provide group presentations and we prove rigidity results for these quotients arising from exact sequences related to (generalised) Fadell-Neuwirth fibrations