Related papers: Self-intersections are empirically Gaussian

Oriented closed curves on an orientable surface with boundary are described up to continuous deformation by reduced cyclic words in the generators of the fundamental group and their inverses. By self-intersection number one means the…

The minimum number of self-intersection points for members of a free homotopy class of curves on the punctured torus is bounded above in terms of the number L of letters required for a minimal description of the class in terms of the…

Oriented loops on an orientable surface are, up to equivalence by free homotopy, in one-to-one correspondence with the conjugacy classes of the surface's fundamental group. These conjugacy classes can be expressed (not uniquely in the case…

We address the problem of computing bounds for the self-intersection number (the minimum number of self-intersection points) of members of a free homotopy class of curves in the doubly-punctured plane as a function of their combinatorial…

We classify closed curves on a once-punctured torus with a single self-intersection from a combinatorial perspective. We determine the number of closed curves with given word-length and with zero, one, and arbitrary self-intersections.

Two free homotopy classes of closed curves in an orientable surface with negative Euler characteristic are said to be length equivalent if for any hyperbolic structure on the surface, the length of the geodesic in one class is equal to the…

We study mapping class group orbits of homotopy and isotopy classes of curves with self-intersections. We exhibit the asymptotics of the number of such orbits of curves with a bounded number of self-intersections, as the complexity of the…

The geometric intersection number of a curve on a surface is the minimal number of self-intersections of any homotopic curve, i.e. of any curve obtained by continuous deformation. Given a curve $c$ represented by a closed walk of length at…

Given an orientable surface with boundary and a free homotopy class, we present a purely combinatorial algorithm which produces a representative of that homotopy class with minimal self intersection.

We consider the relations between different measures of complexity for free homotopy classes of curves on a surface $\Sigma$, including the minimum number of self-intersections, the minimum length of the words representing them in a…

For two oriented simple closed curves on a compact orientable surface with a connected boundary we introduce a simple computation of a value in the first homology group of the surface, which detects in some cases that the geometric…

We show that any set of distinct homotopy classes of simple closed curves on the torus that pairwise intersect at most $k$ times has size $k + O(\sqrt{k} \log k)$. Prior to this work, a lemma of Agol, together with the state of the art…

Each free homotopy class of directed closed curves on a surface with boundary can be described by a cyclic reduced word in the generators of the fundamental group and their inverses. The word length is the number of letters of the cyclic…

The mapping class group of a surface $\S$ acts on the set of closed geodesics on $\S$. This action preserves self-intersection number. In this paper, we count the orbits of curves with at most $K$ self-intersections, for each $K \geq 1$.…

We introduce an operation that measures the self intersections of paths on a surface. As applications, we give a criterion of the realizability of a generalized Dehn twist, and derive a geometric constraint on the image of the Johnson…

We consider random Gaussian eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on the standard torus, and investigate the number of nodal intersections against a line segment. The expected intersection number, against any smooth curve, is universally…

This paper explores the relationship between closed curves on surfaces and their intersections. Like Dehn-Thurston coordinates for simple curves, we explore how to determine closed curves using the number of times they intersect other…

We consider systems of simple closed curves on surfaces and their total number of intersection points, their so-called crossing number. For a fixed number of curves, we aim to minimise the crossing number. We determine the minimal crossing…

Let $\Sigma$ be a surface of negative Euler characteristic and $S$ a generating set for $\pi_1(\Sigma,p)$ consisting of simple loops that are pairwise disjoint (except at $p$). We show that the word length with respect to $S$ of an element…

We investigate the number of nodal intersections of random Gaussian Laplace eigenfunctions on the standard two-dimensional flat torus ("arithmetic random waves") with a fixed real-analytic reference curve with nonvanishing curvature. The…