Tight geodesics in the curve complex (Q2475974)

Let \(\Sigma\) be a compact surface of genus \(g\) with \(p\) boundary components and with negative Euler characteristic. The curve graph \(\mathcal{G}\) is the one-dimensional simplicial complex whose vertex set is the set \(\mathcal{S}\) of homotopy classes of simple closed curves on \(\Sigma\) that are not homotopic to a point or to a boundary component, and whose edges are the pairs of elements of \(\mathcal{S}\) that can be represented by two disjoint and nonhomotopic curves. Masur and Minsky showed that \(\mathcal{G}\), equipped with its simplicial metric, is Gromov-hyperbolic, and they introduced the notion of a tight geodesic in this complex. They showed that for any pair of distinct vertices, the set of tight geodesics joining them is nonempty and finite. In the paper under review, the author proves some finiteness results for tight geodesics which refine the results of Masur and Minsky. He obtains bounds on the number of points that can lie on a tight geodesic in a bounded neighborhood of a given point. He shows that a slice of the union of tight geodesics between any pair of points has cardinality bounded in terms of the topological type of \(\Sigma\). He obtains results on the mapping class group of \(\Sigma\) by studying its action on the curve graph. For example, he proves that the mapping class group satisfies the acylindricity condition, and that the stable lengths of pseudo-Anosov elements are rational with bounded denominator. This stable length property is deduced from the following result: There exists an integer \(m\) depending on the topology of the surface \(\Sigma\) such that if a mapping class \(g\) is pseudo-Anosov, then \(g^m\) preserves some bi-infinite geodesic in \(\mathcal{G}\). \textit{G. C. Bell} and \textit{K. Fujiwara} used some of the results of this paper to show that the curve complex has finite asymptotic dimension, [see J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 77, No. 1, 33--50 (2008; Zbl 1135.57010)].