English

Counting Mapping Class group orbits on hyperbolic surfaces

Geometric Topology 2016-01-14 v1

Abstract

Let Sg,nS_{g,n} be a surface of genus gg with nn marked points. Let XX be a complete hyperbolic metric on Sg,nS_{g,n} with nn cusps. Every isotopy class [γ][\gamma] of a closed curve γπ1(Sg,n)\gamma \in \pi_{1}(S_{g,n}) contains a unique closed geodesic on XX. Let γ(X)\ell_{\gamma}(X) denote the hyperbolic length of the geodesic representative of γ\gamma on XX. In this paper, we study the asymptotic growth of the lengths of closed curves of a fixed topological type on Sg,n.S_{g,n}. As an application, one can obtain the asymptotics of the growth of sXk(L)s^{k}_{X}(L), the number of closed curves of length L\leq L on XX with at most kk self-intersections. We also discuss properties of random pants decomposition of large length on XX. Both these results are based on ergodic properties of the earthquake flow on a natural bundle over the moduli space Mg,n\mathcal{M}_{g,n} of hyperbolic surfaces of genus gg with nn cusps.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1601.03342,
  title  = {Counting Mapping Class group orbits on hyperbolic surfaces},
  author = {Maryam Mirzakhani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.03342},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:28:52.918Z