Let S be a compact, orientable surface of hyperbolic type and let ψ be a mapping class of S. The present article shows that there exists a finite cover X of S and a lift ψ_X of ψ to X such that the spectral radius of ψ_X, viewed as an automorphism of H_1(X,C), is greater than one if and only if ψ has infinite order and is not a Dehn multitwist. Among the corollaries of this result is the fact that a compact, irreducible 3-manifold with toroidal or empty boundary and positive simplicial volume admits a finite cover for which the multivariable Alexander polynomial is not identically zero and has Mahler measure strictly greater than one; such a manifold also admits a finite cover whose integral first homology has nontrivial torsion. An independent proof of the main result of this paper was given by A. Hadari [Geom. Topol. 24 (2020), no. 4, 1717–1750; MR4173920]. In that paper, the surface was assumed to have at least one boundary component, but stronger control over the required finite covers was obtained.

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We show that the notion of hyperconvex representation due to F. Labourie gives a geometric characterization of the representations of a surface group in PSLn(R) that belong to the Hitchin component.

The set of all non-increasing nonnegative integers sequence $\pi=$ ($d(v_1 ),$ $d(v_2 ),$ $...,$ $d(v_n )$) is denoted by $NS_n$. A sequence $\pi\in NS_n$ is said to be graphic if it is the degree sequence of a simple graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, and such a graph $G$ is called a realization of $\pi$. The set of all graphic sequences in $NS_n$ is denoted by $GS_n$. A graphical sequence $\pi$ is potentially $H$-graphical if there is a realization of $\pi$ containing $H$ as a subgraph, while $\pi$ is forcibly $H$-graphical if every realization of $\pi$ contains $H$ as a subgraph. Let $K_k$ denote a complete graph on $k$ vertices. Let $K_{m}-H$ be the graph obtained from $K_{m}$ by removing the edges set $E(H)$ of the graph $H$ ($H$ is a subgraph of $K_{m}$). This paper summarizes briefly some recent results on potentially $K_{m}-G$-graphic sequences and give a useful classification for determining $\sigma(H,n)$.

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