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Event

Joshua Greene (Boston College)

Wednesday, April 3, 2019 15:00to16:00
Burnside Hall Room 920, 805 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3A 0B9, CA

Title: On loops intersecting at most once.

Abstract: How many simple closed curves can you draw on the closed surface of genus g in such a way that no two are isotopic and no two intersect in more than k points? It is known how to draw a collection in which the number of curves grows as a polynomial in g of degree k+1, and conjecturally, this is best possible. I will describe a proof of an upper bound that matches this function up to a factor of log g. It is based on an elegant geometric argument due to Przytycki and employs some novel ideas blending covering spaces and probabilistic combinatorics.

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