English

Filling of closed Surfaces

Geometric Topology 2017-09-22 v3

Abstract

Let FgF_g denote a closed oriented surface of genus gg. A set of simple closed curves is called a filling of FgF_g if its complement is a disjoint union of discs. The mapping class group Mod(Fg)\text{Mod}(F_g) of genus gg acts on the set of fillings of FgF_g. The union of the curves in a filling forms a graph on the surface which is a so-called decorated fat graph. It is a fact that two fillings of FgF_g are in the same Mod(Fg)\text{Mod}(F_g)-orbit if and only if the corresponding fat graphs are isomorphic. We prove that any filling of F2F_2 whose complement is a single disc (i.e., a so-called minimal filling) has either three or four closed curves and in each of these two cases, there is a unique such filling up to the action of Mod(F2)\text{Mod}(F_2). We provide a constructive proof to show that the minimum number of discs in the complement of a filling pair of F2F_2 is two. Finally, given positive integers gg and kk with (g,k)(2,1)(g, k)\neq (2, 1), we construct a filling pair of FgF_g such that the complement is a union of kk topological discs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1503.04559,
  title  = {Filling of closed Surfaces},
  author = {Bidyut Sanki},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1503.04559},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

15 Pages, 11 Figures, To appear in J. Topol. Anal

R2 v1 2026-06-22T08:53:46.296Z