English

Surface groups, infinite generating sets, and stable commutator length

Geometric Topology 2021-03-02 v3 Group Theory

Abstract

We give a new proof of a theorem of D. Calegari that says that the Cayley graph of a surface group with respect to any generating set lying in finitely many mapping class group orbits has infinite diameter. This applies, for instance, to the generating set consisting of all simple closed curves.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.00833,
  title  = {Surface groups, infinite generating sets, and stable commutator length},
  author = {Dan Margalit and Andrew Putman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.00833},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

8 pages, 2 figures; to appear in Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh Sect. A

R2 v1 2026-06-23T02:48:34.602Z