English

The space of immersed polygons

Geometric Topology 2024-06-17 v2

Abstract

We use the Schwarz-Christoffel formula to show that for every n3n\geq 3, the space of labelled immersed nn-gons in the plane up to similarity is homeomorphic to R2n4\mathbb{R}^{2n-4}. We then prove that all immersed triangles, quadrilaterals, and pentagons are embedded, from which it follows that the space of labelled simple nn-gons up to similarity is homeomorphic to R2n4\mathbb{R}^{2n-4} if n{3,4,5}n\in \{3,4,5\}. This was first shown by Gonz\'ales and L\'opez-L\'opez for n=4n=4 and conjectured to be true for every n5n\geq 5 by Gonz\'alez and Sedano-Mendoza.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2406.02519,
  title  = {The space of immersed polygons},
  author = {Maxime Fortier Bourque},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.02519},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

v1: 7 pages, 2 figures. v2: fixed some typos

R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:53:17.311Z