Extending homeomorphisms from punctured surfaces to handlebodies

Let Hg be a genus g handlebody and MCG2n(Tg) be the group of the isotopy classes of orientation preserving homeomorphisms of Tg=∂Hg, fixing a given set of 2n points. In this paper we find a finite set of generators for , the subgroup of MCG2n(Tg) consisting of the isotopy classes of homeomorphisms of Tg admitting an extension to the handlebody and keeping fixed the union of n disjoint properly embedded trivial arcs. This result generalizes a previous one obtained by the authors for n=1. The subgroup turns out to be important for the study of knots and links in closed 3-manifolds via (g,n)-decompositions. In fact, the links represented by the isotopy classes belonging to the same left cosets of in MCG2n(Tg) are equivalent.