arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Stephane Sabourau.
We show that the systolic area of every nonpositively curved closed surface $M$ other than the torus is at least $1$, with equality if and only if $M$ is isometric to a square flat Klein bottle. The proof focuses on the Klein-double $4\mathbb RP^2$ and exploits Weil's isoperimetric inequality and a comparison theorem involving a new kind of exponential-type map.
We establish optimal inequalities relating the systole and the inradius to the volume of finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds. In the cusped orientable case, we refine a theorem of Gendulphe by proving a sharp systole-volume inequality whose unique extremal manifold is the figure-eight knot complement. Excluding the figure-eight knot complement, we obtain a stronger inequality whose extremal manifold is the sister of the figure-eight knot complement. We also establish analogous optimal systole-volume inequalities for closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds, where the extremal manifolds are the Weeks-Matveev-Fomenko manifold, the manifold Vol3, and the Meyerhoff manifold. In the second part of the article, we study the inradius. We prove optimal inradius-volume inequalities for orientable and nonorientable cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds, identifying respectively the sister of the figure-eight knot complement and the Gieseking manifold as the extremal cases. We also prove that the Gieseking manifold is the unique cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold of minimal inradius, thereby completing a result of Gendulphe, who had previously established the corresponding lower bound.
More than thirty years ago, Brooks and Buser-Sarnak constructed sequences of closed hyperbolic surfaces with logarithmic systolic growth in the genus. Recently, Liu and Petri showed that such logarithmic systolic lower bound holds for every genus (not merely for genera in some infinite sequence) using random surfaces. In this article, we show a similar result through a more direct approach relying on the original Brooks/Buser-Sarnak surfaces.
We show that every closed nonpositively curved surface satisfies Loewner's systolic inequality. The proof relies on a combination of the Gauss-Bonnet formula with an averaging argument using the invariance of the Liouville measure under the geodesic flow. This enables us to find a disk with large total curvature around its center yielding a large area.
We prove a pair of sharp reverse isoperimetric inequalities for domains in nonpositively curved surfaces: (1) metric disks centered at the vertex of a Euclidean cone of angle at least $2π$ have minimal area among all nonpositively curved disks of the same perimeter and the same total curvature; (2) geodesic triangles in a Euclidean (resp. hyperbolic) cone of angle at least $2π$ have minimal area among all nonpositively curved geodesic triangles (resp. all geodesic triangles of curvature at most $-1$) with the same side lengths and angles.
We prove an inequality of Bonnesen type for the real projective plane, generalizing Pu's systolic inequality for positively-curved metrics. The remainder term in the inequality, analogous to that in Bonnesen's inequality, is a function of R-r (suitably normalized), where R and r are respectively the circumradius and the inradius of the Weyl-Lewy Euclidean embedding of the orientable double cover. We exploit John ellipsoids of a convex body and Pogorelov's ridigity theorem.
This article deals with topological assumptions under which the minimal volume entropy of a closed manifold, and more generally of a finite simplicial complex, vanishes or is positive. In the first part of the article, we present complementing topological conditions expressed in terms of the growth of the fundamental group of the fibers of maps from a given finite simplicial complex to simplicial complexes of lower dimension which ensure that the minimal volume entropy of the simplicial complex either vanishes or is positive. We also give examples of finite simplicial complexes with zero simplicial volume and arbitrarily large minimal volume entropy. In the second part of the article, we present topological assumptions related to the exponential growth of certain subgroups in the fundamental group of a finite simplicial complex and to the topology of the loop space of its classifying space under which the minimal volume entropy is positive. Several examples are presented throughout the text.
We introduce the volume entropy semi-norm in real homology and show that it satisfies functorial properties similar to the ones of the simplicial volume. Answering a question of M. Gromov, we prove that the volume entropy semi-norm is equivalent to the simplicial volume semi-norm in every dimension. We also establish a roughly optimal upper bound on the systolic volume of the multiples of any homology class.
The regularity of systolically extremal surfaces is a notoriously difficult problem already discussed by M. Gromov in 1983, who proposed an argument toward the existence of $L^2$-extremizers exploiting the theory of $r$-regularity developed by P. A. White and others by the 1950s. We propose to study the problem of systolically extremal metrics in the context of generalized metrics of nonpositive curvature. A natural approach would be to work in the class of Alexandrov surfaces of finite total curvature, where one can exploit the tools of the completion provided in the context of Radon measures as studied by Reshetnyak and others. However the generalized metrics in this sense still don't have enough regularity. Instead, we develop a more hands-on approach and show that, for each genus, every systolically extremal nonpositively curved surface is piecewise flat with finitely many conical singularities. This result exploits a decomposition of the surface into flat systolic bands and nonsystolic polygonal regions, as well as the combinatorial/topological estimates of Malestein-Rivin-Theran, Przytycki, Aougab-Biringer-Gaster and Greene on the number of curves meeting at most once, combined with a kite excision move. The move merges pairs of conical singularities on a surface of genus $g$ and leads to an asymptotic upper bound $g^{4+ε}$ on the number of singularities.
We prove an optimal systolic inequality for nonpositively curved Dyck's surfaces. The extremal surface is flat with eight conical singularities, six of angle theta and two of angle 9pi - theta, for a suitable theta with cos(theta) in Q(sqrt{19}). Relying on some delicate capacity estimates, we also show that the extremal surface is not conformally equivalent to the hyperbolic surface with maximal systole, yielding a first example of systolic extremality with this behavior.
We show that every non-elementary group $G$ acting properly and cocompactly by isometries on a proper geodesic Gromov hyperbolic space $X$ is growth tight. In other words, the exponential growth rate of $G$ for the geometric (pseudo)-distance induced by $X$ is greater than the exponential growth rate of any of its quotients by an infinite normal subgroup. This result generalizes from a unified framework previous works of Arzhantseva-Lysenok and Sambusetti, and provides an answer to a question of the latter.
Given a hyperelliptic Klein surface, we construct companion Klein bottles, extending our technique of companion tori already exploited by the authors in the genus 2 case. Bavard's short loops on such companion surfaces are studied in relation to the original surface so to improve a systolic inequality of Gromov's. A basic idea is to use length bounds for loops on a companion Klein bottle, and then analyze how curves transplant to the original nonorientable surface. We exploit the real structure on the orientable double cover by applying the coarea inequality to the distance function from the real locus. Of particular interest is the case of Dyck's surface. We also exploit an optimal systolic bound for the Möbius band, due to Blatter.
We prove a systolic inequality for the phi-relative 1-systole of a phi-essential 2-complex, where phi is a homomorphism from the fundamental group of the complex, to a finitely presented group G. Indeed we show that universally for any phi-essential Riemannian 2-complex, and any G, the area of X is bounded below by 1/8 of sys(X,phi)^2. Combining our results with a method of Larry Guth, we obtain new quantitative results for certain 3-manifolds: in particular for Sigma the Poincare homology sphere, we have sys(Sigma)^3 < 24 vol(Sigma).
Recently, F. Balacheff proved that the Calabi-Croke sphere made of two flat 1-unit-side equilateral triangles glued along their boundaries is a local extremum for the length of the shortest closed geodesic among the Riemannian spheres with conical singularities of fixed area. We give an alternative proof of this theorem, which does not make use of the uniformization theorem, and extend the result to Finsler metrics.
Let X be a finite 2-complex with unfree fundamental group. We prove lower bounds for the area of a metric on X, in terms of the square of the least length of a noncontractible loop in X. We thus establish a uniform systolic inequality for all unfree 2-complexes. Our inequality improves the constant in M. Gromov's inequality in this dimension. The argument relies on the Reeb graph and the coarea formula, combined with an induction on the number of freely indecomposable factors in Grushko's decomposition of the fundamental group. More specifically, we construct a kind of a Reeb space ``minimal model'' for X, reminiscent of the ``chopping off long fingers'' construction used by Gromov in the context of surfaces. As a consequence, we prove the agreement of the Lusternik-Schnirelmann and systolic categories of a 2-complex.
We prove an optimal systolic inequality for CAT(0) metrics on a genus~2 surface. We use a Voronoi cell technique, introduced by C.~Bavard in the hyperbolic context. The equality is saturated by a flat singular metric in the conformal class defined by the smooth completion of the curve y^2=x^5-x. Thus, among all CAT(0) metrics, the one with the best systolic ratio is composed of six flat regular octagons centered at the Weierstrass points of the Bolza surface.
We establish isosystolic inequalities for a class of manifolds which includes the aspherical manifolds. In particular, we relate the systolic volume of aspherical manifolds first to their minimal entropy, then to the algebraic entropy of their fundamental groups.
We find an upper bound for the entropy of a systolically extremal surface, in terms of its systole. We combine the upper bound with A. Katok's lower bound in terms of the volume, to obtain a simpler alternative proof of M. Gromov's asymptotic estimate for the optimal systolic ratio of surfaces of large genus. Furthermore, we improve the multiplicative constant in Gromov's theorem. We show that every surface of genus at least 20 is Loewner. Finally, we relate, in higher dimension, the isoembolic ratio to the minimal entropy.