Related papers: Self-intersection numbers of length-equivalent cur…
A pair of distinct free homotopy classes of closed curves in an orientable surface $F$ with negative Euler characteristic is said to be length equivalent if for any hyperbolic structure on $F$, the length of the geodesic representative of…
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…
In an orientable surface with boundary, free homotopy classes of curves on surfaces are in one to one correspondence with cyclic reduced words in a set of standard generators of the fundamental group. The combinatorial length of a class is…
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…
In this note, we develop a condition on a closed curve on a surface or in a 3-manifold that implies that the curve has the property that its length function on the space of all hyperbolic structures on the surface or 3-manifold completely…
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…
We study the geometric properties of the terms of the Goldman bracket between two free homotopy classes of oriented closed curves in a hyperbolic surface. We provide an obstruction for the equality of two terms in the Goldman bracket,…
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…
We study the order of lengths of closed geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces. Our first main result is that the order of lengths of curves determine a point in Teichm\"uller space. In an opposite direction, we identify classes of curves whose…
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 prove algebraic analogues of the facts that a curve on a surface with self-intersection number zero is homotopic to a cover of a simple curve, and that two simple curves on a surface with intersection number zero can be isotoped to be…
We consider various equivalence relations on the set of homotopy classes of curves on a hyperbolic surface based on topological, algebraic, and geometric structures. The purpose of this work is to determine the relationship between these…
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 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…
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…
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 $K \geq 1$.…
For every finite collection of curves on a surface, we define an associated (semi-)norm on the first homology group of the surface. The unit ball of the dual norm is the convex hull of its integer points. We give an interpretation of these…
Our main point of focus is the set of closed geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces. For any fixed integer $k$, we are interested in the set of all closed geodesics with at least $k$ (but possibly more) self-intersections. Among these, we…
We give a lower bound on the number of non-simple closed curves on a hyperbolic surface, given upper bounds on both length and self-intersection number. In particular, we carefully show how to construct closed geodesics on pairs of pants,…
Given a compact orientable surface of negative Euler characteristic, there exists a natural pairing between the Teichmueuller space of the surface and the set of homotopy classes of simple loops and arcs. The length pairing sends a…