Related papers: Pants Decompositions of Surfaces

A curve \gamma in the plane is t-monotone if its interior has at most t-1 vertical tangent points. A family of t-monotone curves F is \emph{simple} if any two members intersect at most once. It is shown that if F is a simple family of n…

Trivalent $2$-stratifolds are a generalization of $2$-manifolds in that there are disjoint simple closed curves where three sheets meet. We obtain a classification of $1$-connected $2$-stratifolds in terms of their associated labeled graphs…

Minimal surfaces are ubiquitous in nature. Here they are considered as geometric objects that bear a deformation content. By refining the resolution of the surface deformation gradient afforded by the polar decomposition theorem, we…

The Whitney-Graustein theorem states that regular closed curves in the 2-plane are classified, up to regular homotopy, by their rotation number. Here we give a simple proof based on contact geometry.

We provide a unique decomposition of every 4-connected graph into parts that are either quasi-5-connected, cycles of triangle-torsos and 3-connected torsos on $\leq 5$ vertices, generalised double-wheels, or thickened $K_{4,m}$'s. The…

We present a construction of sequences of closed hyperbolic surfaces that have long systoles which form pants decompositions of these surfaces. The length of the systoles of these surfaces grows logarithmically as a function of their genus.

We give a new proof of the theorem of Birman-Powell that the Torelli subgroup of the mapping class group of a closed orientable surface of genus at least 3 is generated by simple homeomorphisms known as bounding pair maps. The key…

In this paper we will show that two surfaces of the same genus and homology class in a simply connected 4-manifold are concordant. We will show they are often topologically isotopic when their complements have cyclic fundamental group.…

A notion of dual curve for pseudoholomorphic curves in 4--manifolds turns out to be possible only if the notion of almost complex structure structure is slightly generalized. The resulting structure is as easy (perhaps easier) to work with,…

We define a pants distance for knotted surfaces in 4-manifolds which generalizes the complexity studied by Blair-Campisi-Taylor-Tomova for surfaces in the 4-sphere. We determine that if the distance computed on a given diagram does not…

We establish a general `gluing theorem', which states roughly that if two nondegenerate constant mean curvature surfaces are juxtaposed, so that their tangent planes are parallel and very close to one another, but oppositely oriented, then…

We show that every smooth, orientable, closed, connected 4-manifold can be represented by a loop in the pants complex. We use this representation, together with the fact that the pants complex is simply connected, to provide an elementary…

Let $S_g$ denote the closed orientable surface of genus $g$. We construct exponentially many mapping class group orbits of collections of $2g+1$ simple closed curves on $S_g$ which pairwise intersect exactly once, extending a result of the…

A planar set $P$ is said to be cover-decomposable if there is a constant $k=k(P)$ such that every $k$-fold covering of the plane with translates of $P$ can be decomposed into two coverings. It is known that open convex polygons are…

If $X$ is a compact set, a {\it topological contraction} is a self-embedding $f$ such that the intersection of the successive images $f^k(X)$, $k>0$, consists of one point. In dimension 3, we prove that there are smooth topological…

In this paper we show that the convergence of complete Kahler-Einstein hypersurfaces in complex torus in the sense of Cheeger-Gromov will canonically degenerate the underlying manifolds into "pair of pants" decomposition. We also construct…

Just as point objects are parallel transported along curves, giving holonomies, string-like objects are parallel transported along surfaces, giving surface holonomies. Composition of these surfaces correspond to products in a category…

We prove that for any closed surface of genus at least four, and any punctured surface of genus at least two, the space of ending laminations is connected. A theorem of E. Klarreich implies that this space is homeomorphic to the Gromov…

We present statistics on the decompositions (with respect to a distinguished symmetric 2t-cycle) of vertices of the hypercube graph, whose negative parts are covered by two subsets of the ground set {1,...,t} of the corresponding oriented…

The Decomposition Problem in the class $LIP(\mathbb{S}^2)$ is to decompose any bi-Lipschitz map $f:\mathbb{S}^2 \to \mathbb{S}^2$ as a composition of finitely many maps of arbitrarily small isometric distortion. In this paper, we construct…