Jim Anderson, University of Southampton
 
Small Filling Sets of Curves on a Surface
Consider a set of simple closed curves on a surface of genus g which fill the surface and which pairwise intersect at most once. We show that the asymptotic growth rate of the smallest number in such a set is 2√g as g goes to infinity. More generally, we give a precise asymptotic for filling sets of curves which pairwise intersect at most K ≥ 1 times. We then bound from below the cardinality of a filling set of systoles by g/log(g). The topological condition that a set of curves pairwise intersect at most once is thus quite far from the geometric condition that a set of curves can arise as systoles. This is joint work with Hugo Parlier and Alexandra Pettet.


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