Related papers: Minimizing intersection points of curves under vir…

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…

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…

In the eighties Goldman discovered a Lie algebra structure on the vector space generated by the free homotopy classes of oriented curves on an oriented surface. The Lie bracket [a,b] is defined as the signed sum over the intersection points…

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…

Given two free homotopy classes $\alpha_1, \alpha_2$ of loops on an oriented surface, it is natural to ask how to compute the minimum number of intersection points $m(\alpha_1, \alpha_2)$ of loops in these two classes. We show that for…

A virtual link may be defined as an equivalence class of diagrams, or alternatively as a stable equivalence class of links in thickened surfaces. We prove that a minimal crossing virtual link diagram has minimal genus across representatives…

We address the question of detecting minimal virtual diagrams with respect to the number of virtual crossings. This problem is closely connected to the problem of detecting the minimal number of additional intersection points for a generic…

In this paper, we study the problem of computing a homotopy from a planar curve $C$ to a point that minimizes the area swept. The existence of such a minimum homotopy is a direct result of the solution of Plateau's problem. Chambers and…

The connected sum of two flat virtual knots depends on the choice of diagrams and basepoints. We show that any minimal crossing diagram of a composite flat virtual knot is a connected sum diagram. We also show the crossing number of flat…

We show that mapping class groups associated to all types of real algebraic curves are virtual duality groups. We also deduce some results about the orbifold homotopy groups of the moduli spaces of real algebraic curves. We achieve these…

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…

A virtual $n$-string $\alpha$ is a collection of $n$ oriented smooth generic loops on a surface $M$. A stabilization of $\alpha$ is a surgery that results in attaching a handle to $M$ along disks avoiding $\alpha$, and the inverse operation…

The minimal free resolution of the coordinate ring of a complete intersection in projective space is a Koszul complex on a regular sequence. In the product of projective spaces $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$, we investigate which sets…

We study the intersection theory of punctured pseudoholomorphic curves in $4$-dimensional symplectic cobordisms. We first study the local intersection properties of such curves at the punctures. We then use this to develop topological…

We provide an efficient algorithm to compute the minimum area of a homotopy between two closed plane curves, given that they divide the plane into finite number of regions. For any positive real number $\varepsilon>0$, we construct a closed…

Let $S$ be a complete flat surface, such as the Euclidean plane. We determine the homeomorphism class of the space of all curves on $S$ which start and end at given points in given directions and whose curvatures are constrained to lie in a…

Ribbon 2-knotted objects are locally flat embeddings of surfaces in 4-space which bound immersed 3-manifolds with only ribbon singularities. They appear as topological realizations of welded knotted objects, which is a natural quotient of…

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…

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 study the interplay between the recently defined concept of minimum homotopy area and the classical topic of self-overlapping curves. The latter are plane curves which are the image of the boundary of an immersed disk. Our first…