Almost simple geodesics on the triply-punctured sphere (Q2633102)

The authors study almost simple closed geodesics \(\gamma\) on the triply-punctured sphere \(M:=\widehat{\mathbb C}\setminus\{0,1,\infty\}\). Let \(I(\gamma)\) denote the self-intersection number, and let \(L(\gamma)\) be the combinatorial length of \(\gamma\) (\(2L(\gamma)\) is the number of times that \(\gamma\) crosses the real line). The authors prove that \(\delta(\gamma):=I(\gamma)-L(\gamma)\geq-1\). The main result states that for every \(\delta\geq-1\) there exists a quadratic polynomial \(p_\delta\) such that for all \(L\geq\delta+4\) we have \(p_\delta(L)=\#(\{\gamma: L(\gamma)=L,\;\delta(\gamma)=\delta\})\).