Related papers: Optimal sweepouts of a Riemannian 2-sphere

Given a Riemannian metric on the 2-sphere, sweep the 2-sphere out by a continuous one-parameter family of closed curves starting and ending at point curves. Pull the sweepout tight by, in a continuous way, pulling each curve as tight as…

We prove the absence of a universal diameter bound on lengths of curves in a sweep-out of a Riemannian 2-sphere. If such bound existed it would yield a simple proof of existence of short geodesic segments and closed geodesics on a sphere of…

This article investigates when homotopies can be converted to monotone homotopies without increasing the lengths of curves. A monotone homotopy is one which consists of curves which are simple or constant, and in which curves are pairwise…

We prove the existence of immersed closed curves of constant geodesic curvature in an arbitrary Riemannian 2-sphere for almost every prescribed curvature. To achieve this, we develop a min-max scheme for a weighted length functional.

Given a Riemannian metric on a homotopy $n$-sphere, sweep it out by a continuous one-parameter family of closed curves starting and ending at point curves. Pull the sweepout tight by, in a continuous way, pulling each curve as tight as…

We construct a family of Riemannian 3-spheres that cannot be "swept out" by short closed curves. More precisely, for each $L > 0$ we construct a Riemannian 3-sphere $M$ with diameter and volume less than 1, so that every 2-parameter family…

The classic Lusternik--Schnirelmann theorem states that there are three distinct simple periodic geodesics on any Riemannian 2-sphere $M$. It has been proven by Y. Liokumovich, A. Nabutovsky and R. Rotman that the shortest three such curves…

We prove two theorems about homotopies of curves on 2-dimensional Riemannian manifolds. We show that, for any epsilon > 0, if two simple closed curves are homotopic through curves of bounded length L, then they are also isotopic through…

We study curvature functionals for immersed 2-spheres in a compact, three-dimensional Riemannian manifold M. Under the assumption that the sectional curvature of M is strictly positive, we prove the existence of a smoothly immersed sphere…

Considering Riemannian submersions, we find necessary and sufficient conditions for when sub-Riemannian normal geodesics project to curves of constant first geodesic curvature or constant first and vanishing second geodesic curvatures. We…

We consider the problem of finding embedded closed geodesics on the two-sphere with an incomplete metric defined outside a point. Various techniques including curve shortening methods are used.

In this paper, we prove that the $3$-sphere endowed with an arbitrary Riemannian metric either contains at least two embedded minimal $2$-spheres or admits an optimal foliation by $2$-spheres. This generalizes recent results by…

Let x and y be two (not necessarily distinct) points on a closed Riemannian manifold M of dimension n. According to a celebrated theorem by J.P. Serre there exist infinitely many geodesics between x and y. The length of the shortest of…

Length-bounded sweepouts provide a method for bounding the length of the shortest closed geodesic of a closed manifold. In this paper, we generalize this approach to the case of compact 2-dimensional orbifolds homeomorphic to S^2 as well as…

Let $D$ be a Riemannian 2-disc of area $A$, diameter $d$ and length of the boundary $L$. We prove that it is possible to contract the boundary of $D$ through curves of length $\leq L + 200d\max\{1,\ln {\sqrt{A}\over d} \}$. This answers a…

The simple length spectrum of a Riemannian manifold is the set of lengths of its simple closed geodesics. We prove a theorem claimed by Lusternik: in any Riemannian 2-sphere whose simple length spectrum consists of only one element L, any…

We employ the curve shortening flow to establish three new results on the dynamics of geodesic flows of closed Riemannian surfaces. The first one is the stability, under $C^0$-small perturbations of the Riemannian metric, of certain flat…

We extend two celebrated theorems on closed geodesics of Riemannian 2-spheres to the larger class of reversible Finsler 2-spheres: Lusternik-Schnirelmann's theorem asserting the existence of three simple closed geodesics, and…

The $p$-widths of a closed Riemannian manifold are a nonlinear analogue of the spectrum of its Laplace--Beltrami operator, which corresponds to areas of a certain min-max sequence of possibly singular minimal submanifolds. We show that the…

We explicitly describe the length minimizing geodesics for a sub-Riemannian structure of the elliptic type defined on $SL(2, \mathbb{R})$. Our method uses a symmetry reduction which translates the problem into a Riemannian problem on a two…