English

Puncture loops on a non-orientable surface

Geometric Topology 2025-03-11 v1

Abstract

On a connected surface NN with negative Euler characteristic, the free homotopy class of a loop obtained by smoothing an intersection of two closed geodesics may wind around a puncture. Chas and Kabiraj showed that this phenomenon does not occur when the surface NN is orientable. In this paper, we prove that it occurs when NN is non-orientable and both geodesics involved in the smoothing are actually one-sided. In particular, we study a loop obtained by traversing a one-sided closed geodesic and the mm-th power of another one-sided closed geodesic for odd mm. Then we show that its free homotopy class may wind aroud a puncture at most two values of mm. Furthermore, if two such mm's exist, they are consecutive odd integers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.07247,
  title  = {Puncture loops on a non-orientable surface},
  author = {Aoi Wakuda},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.07247},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

10 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:13:55.211Z