A representation theoretic characterization of simple closed curves on a surface

Thomas Koberda; Ramanujan Santharoubane

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arXiv · 1603.03456

A representation theoretic characterization of simple closed curves on a surface

Thomas Koberda·Ramanujan Santharoubane

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Abstract

We produce a sequence of finite dimensional representations of the fundamental group $\pi_1(S)$ of a closed surface where all simple closed curves act with finite order, but where each non--simple closed curve eventually acts with infinite order. As a consequence, we obtain a representation theoretic algorithm which decides whether or not a given element of $\pi_1(S)$ is freely homotopic to a simple closed curve. The construction of these representations combines ideas from TQFT representations of mapping class groups with effective versions of LERF for surface groups.

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Thomas Koberda, Ramanujan Santharoubane. 2016-03-10. A representation theoretic characterization of simple closed curves on a surface. https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03456

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