English

Covers of surfaces

Geometric Topology 2025-08-05 v3

Abstract

We study the homeomorphism types of certain covers of (always orientable) surfaces, usually of infinite-type. We show that every surface with non-abelian fundamental group is covered by every noncompact surface, we identify the universal abelian covers and the Z/nZ\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}-homology covers of surfaces, and we show that non-locally finite characteristic covers of surfaces have four possible homeomorphism types.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.03967,
  title  = {Covers of surfaces},
  author = {Ian Biringer and Yassin Chandran and Tommaso Cremaschi and Jing Tao and Nicholas G. Vlamis and Mujie Wang and Brandis Whitfield},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.03967},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

final version, accepted at AGT

R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:36:01.099Z