English

Circle Decompositions of Surfaces

General Topology 2011-01-04 v2 Geometric Topology

Abstract

We determine which connected surfaces can be partitioned into topological circles. There are exactly seven such surfaces up to homeomorphism: those of finite type, of Euler characteristic zero, and with compact boundary components. As a byproduct, we get that any circle decomposition of a surface is upper semicontinuous.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1009.0575,
  title  = {Circle Decompositions of Surfaces},
  author = {Gábor Moussong and Nándor Simányi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1009.0575},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

9 pages, final version, to appear in Topology and its Applications (2010). A few missprints have been corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:08:55.175Z