Irreducible generating tuples of Fuchsian groups

Abstract: L. Louder showed that any generating tuple of a surface group is Nielsen equivalent to a stabilized standard generating tuple i.e. $(a_1,\ldots ,a_k,1\ldots, 1)$ where $(a_1,\ldots ,a_k)$ is the standard generating tuple. This implies in particular that irreducible generating tuples, i.e. tuples that are not Nielsen equivalent to a tuple of the form $(g_1,\ldots ,g_k,1)$, are minimal. In a previous work the first author generalized Louder's ideas and showed that all irreducible and non-standard generating tuples of sufficiently large Fuchsian groups can be represented by so-called almost orbifold covers endowed with a rigid generating tuple. In the present paper a variation of the ideas from \cite{W2} is used to show that this almost orbifold cover with a rigid generating tuple is unique up to the appropriate equivalence. It is moreover shown that any such generating tuple is irreducible. This provides a way to exhibit many Nielsen classes of non-minimal irreducible generating tuples for Fuchsian groups. As an application we show that generating tuples of fundamental groups of Haken Seifert manifolds corresponding to irreducible horizontal Heegaard splittings are irreducible.