Measuring complexity of curves on surfaces (Q2290842)

The authors discuss and compare various measures of complexity for free homotopy classes \(\alpha\) of closed immersed curves on a compact surface, among them the minimum number \(i(\alpha)\) of self-intersections, the minimum length \(l(\alpha)\) of a word representing \(\alpha\) in a standard presentation of the fundamental group of the surface, and the minimum degrees \(d(\alpha)\) and \(r(\alpha)\) of a covering of the surface to which \(\alpha\) lifts resp. does not lift as a closed embedded curve. The main result of the paper states that, for the case of an orientable surface, \(d(\alpha) < 5(i(\alpha) + 1)\), answering a question of \textit{I. Rivin} [Adv. Math. 231, No. 5, 2391--2412 (2012; Zbl 1257.57024)] who asked if it is possible to bound \(d(\alpha)\) in terms of \(i(\alpha)\) alone (some other bounds were known before in terms of the length of a geodesic in the class \(\alpha\), or with a constant depending also on the topology of the surface). Several other inequalities are obtained in the present paper, for example for \(r(\alpha)\) in terms of \(i(\alpha)\) alone, and for \(l(\alpha)\) in terms of \(i(\alpha)\) and the genus of the surface.