Related papers: Short loops in surfaces with a circle boundary com…

The systole of a closed Riemannian manifold is the minimal length of a non-contractible closed loop. We give a uniform lower bound for the systole for large classes of simple arithmetic locally symmetric orbifolds. We establish new bounds…

The closed string field theory minimal-area problem asks for the conformal metric of least area on a Riemann surface with the condition that all non-contractible closed curves have length at least 2\pi. Through every point in such a metric…

Given a Riemannian surface, we consider a naturally embedded graph which captures part of the topology and geometry of the surface. By studying this graph, we obtain results in three different directions. First, we find bounds on the…

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…

We study the metric of minimal area on a punctured Riemann surface under the condition that all nontrivial homotopy closed curves be longer than or equal to $2\pi$. By constructing deformations of admissible metrics we establish necessary…

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 a "gluing" theorem for monotone homotopies; a monotone homotopy is a homotopy through simple contractible closed curves which themselves are pairwise disjoint. We show that two monotone homotopies which have appropriate overlap can…

In this paper we raise the question whether every closed Riemannian manifold has a spine of minimal area, and we answer it affirmatively in the surface case. On constant curvature surfaces we introduce the spine systole, a continuous real…

We answer a question of Liokumovich-Nabutovsky-Rotman showing that if D is a Riemannian 2-disc with boundary length L, diameter d and area A << d then D can be filled by a homotopy where the lengths of the intermediate curves are bounded by…

We derive new, sharp lower bounds for certain curvature functionals on the space of Riemannian metrics of a smooth compact 4-manifold with a non-trivial Seiberg-Witten invariant. These allow one, for example, to exactly compute the infimum…

In this paper, we are interested in short homologically and homotopically independent loops based at the same point on Riemannian surfaces and metric graphs. First, we show that for every closed Riemannian surface of genus $g \geq 2$ and…

The systolic area $\alpha_{sys}$ of a nonsimply connected compact Riemannian surface $(M,g)$ is defined as its area divided by the square of the systole, where the systole is equal to the length of a shortest noncontractible closed curve.…

We obtain new topological information about the local structure of collapsing under a lower sectional curvature bound. As an application we prove a new sphere theorem and obtain a partial result towards the conjecture that not every…

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…

For two measured laminations $\nu^+$ and $\nu^-$ that fill up a hyperbolizable surface $S$ and for $t \in (-\infty, \infty)$, let $L_t$ be the unique hyperbolic surface that minimizes the length function $e^t l(\nu^+) + e^{-t} l(\nu^-)$ on…

We consider two disjoint and homotopic non-contractible embedded loops on a Riemann surface and prove the existence of a non-contractible orbit for a Hamiltonian function on the surface whenever it is sufficiently large on one of the loops…

In this paper we extend and simplify previous results regarding the computation of Euclidean Wilson loops in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence, or, equivalently, the problem of finding minimal area surfaces in hyperbolic space…

We prove a universal inequality between the diastole, defined using a minimax process on the one-cycle space, and the area of closed Riemannian surfaces. Roughly speaking, we show that any closed Riemannian surface can be swept out by a…

We prove that the stable 2-systole is uniformly bounded on the space of Riemannian metrics with scalar curvature at least one for closed spin 2-essential manifolds, which includes $S^2 \times S^2$, $S^2 \times T^n$, and…

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…