Local maxima of the systole function (Q2119374)

The systole of a hyperbolic surface is the length of any of its shortest closed geodesics. For any \(g\ge 2\), this defines a non-negative continuous function sys on the Teichmüller space \(T_g\) of closed hyperbolic surfaces of genus \(g\) which is invariant under the action of the mapping class group, hence descends to a continuous function on the Riemann moduli space \(M_g\). To find the global maximizer of the systole, \textit{P. Schmutz} [Geom. Funct. Anal. 3, No. 6, 564--631 (1993; Zbl 0810.53034)] initiated a systematic study of the systole function and its local maxima. The goal of this paper is to show that the number of local maxima of the systole function grows super-exponentially with the genus. More precisely, the authors show that for every \(n\ge 3\) there is some positive number \(L_n\) (growing roughly linearly in \(n\)) such that the number of local maxima of the systole function in genus \(g\) with systole equal to \(L_n\) grows super-exponentially in \(g\) along an arithmetic sequence of step size \(n\). Moreover, many of these surfaces have no orientation-preserving isometries other than the identity and are the first examples of local maxima with this property.