Separating Pants Decompositions in the Pants Complex

Harold Mark Sultan

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arXiv · 1106.1472

Separating Pants Decompositions in the Pants Complex

Harold Mark Sultan

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Abstract

We study the topological types of pants decompositions of a surface by associating to any pants decomposition $P,$ in a natural way its pants decomposition graph, $Γ(P).$ This perspective provides a convenient way to analyze the maximum distance in the pants complex of any pants decomposition to a pants decomposition containing a non-trivial separating curve for all surfaces of finite type. In the main theorem we provide an asymptotically sharp approximation of this non-trivial distance in terms of the topology of the surface. In particular, for closed surfaces of genus $g$ we show the maximum distance in the pants complex of any pants decomposition to a pants decomposition containing a separating curve grows asymptotically like the function $\log(g).$

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Harold Mark Sultan. 2011-10-31. Separating Pants Decompositions in the Pants Complex. https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.1472

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