In mathematics, systolic inequalities for curves on surfaces were first studied by Charles Loewner in 1949. Given a closed surface, its systole, denoted sys, is defined to the least length of a loop that cannot be contracted to a point on the surface. The systolic area of a metric is defined to be the ratio area/sys2. The systolic ratioSR is the reciprocal quantity sys2/area. See alsoIntroduction to systolic geometry.
Torus
In 1949 Loewner proved his inequality for metrics on the torus T2, namely that the systolic ratio SR is bounded above by, with equality in the flat case of the equilateral torus.
For the Klein bottle K, Bavard obtained an optimal upper bound of for the systolic ratio: based on work by Blatter from the 1960s.
Genus 2
An orientable surface of genus 2 satisfies Loewner's bound, see. It is unknown whether or not every surface of positive genus satisfies Loewner's bound. It is conjectured that they all do. The answer is affirmative for genus 20 and above by.
Arbitrary genus
For a closed surface of genus g, Hebda and Burago showed that the systolic ratio SR is bounded above by the constant 2. Three years later, Mikhail Gromov found an upper bound for SR given by a constant times A similar lower bound was obtained by Buser and Sarnak. Namely, they exhibited arithmetic hyperbolic Riemann surfaces with systole behaving as a constant times. Note that area is 4π from the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, so that SR behaves asymptotically as a constant times. The study of the asymptotic behavior for large genus of the systole of hyperbolic surfaces reveals some interesting constants. Thus, Hurwitz surfaces defined by a tower of principal congruence subgroups of the hyperbolic triangle group satisfy the bound resulting from an analysis of the Hurwitz quaternion order. A similar bound holds for more general arithmetic Fuchsian groups. This 2007 result by Mikhail Katz, Mary Schaps, and Uzi Vishne improves an inequality due to Peter Sarnak and Peter Buser in the case of arithmetic groups defined over, from 1994, which contained a nonzero additive constant. For the Hurwitz surfaces of principal congruence type, the systolic ratio SR is asymptotic to Using Katok's entropy inequality, the following asymptotic upper bound for SR was found in : see also, p. 85. Combining the two estimates, one obtains tight bounds for the asymptotic behavior of the systolic ratio of surfaces.
Sphere
There is also a version of the inequality for metrics on the sphere, for the invariant L defined as the least length of a closed geodesic of the metric. In '80, Gromov conjectured a lower bound of for the ratio area/L2. A lower bound of 1/961 obtained by Croke in '88 has recently been improved by Nabutovsky, Rotman, and Sabourau.
