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In mathematics, particularly in complex analysis, a Riemann surface is a connected one-dimensional complex manifold. These surfaces were first studied by and are named after Bernhard Riemann. Riemann surfaces can be thought of as deformed versions of the complex plane: locally near every point they look like patches of the complex plane, but the global topology can be quite different. For example, they can look like a sphere or a torus or several sheets glued together. The main interest in Riemann surfaces is that holomorphic functions may be defined between them. Riemann surfaces are nowadays considered the natural setting for studying the global behavior of these functions, especially multi-valued functions such as the square root and other algebraic functions, or the logarithm. Every Riemann surface is a two-dimensional real analytic manifold (i.e., a surface), but it contains more structure (specifically a complex structure) which is needed for the unambiguous definition of hol

Capacities, Systoles and Jacobians of Riemann Surfaces

Björn Mützel

To any compact Riemann surface of genus g one may assign a principally polarized abelian variety (PPAV) of dimension g, the Jacobian of the Riemann surface. The Jacobian is a complex torus and we call a Gram matrix of the lattice of a Jacobian a period Gram matrix. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the Schottky problem, which is to discern the Jacobians among the PPAVs. Buser and Sarnak approached this problem by means of a geometric invariant, the first successive minimum. They showed that the square of the first successive minimum, the squared norm of the shortest non-zero vector, in the lattice of a Jacobian of a Riemann surface of genus g is bounded from above by log(4g), whereas it can be of order g for the lattice of a PPAV of dimension g. The main goal of this work was to improve this result and to get insight into the connection between the geometry of a compact Riemann surface that is given in hyperbolic geometric terms, and the geometry of its Jacobian. We show the following general findings: For a hyperelliptic surface the first successive minimum is bounded from above by a universal constant. The square of the second successive minimum of the Jacobian of a Riemann surface of genus g is equally of order log(g). We provide refined upper bounds on the consecutive successive minima if the surface contains several disjoint small simple closed geodesics and a lower bound for the norm of certain lattice vectors of the Jacobian, if the surface contains small non-separating simple closed geodesics. If the concrete geometry of the Riemann surface is known, more precise statements can be made. In this case we obtain theoretical and practical estimates on all entries of the period Gram matrix. Here we establish upper and lower bounds based on the geometry of the cut locus of simple closed geodesics and also on the geometry of Q-pieces. In addition the following two results have been obtained: First, an improved lower bound for the maximum value of the norm of the shortest non-zero lattice vector among all PPAVs in even dimensions. This follows from an averaging method from the geometry of numbers applied to a family of symmetric PPAVs. Second, a new proof for a lower bound on the number of homotopically distinct geodesic loops, whose length is smaller than a fixed constant. This lower bound applies not only to geodesic loops on Riemann surfaces, but on arbitrary manifolds of non-positive curvature.

EPFL2011

Trace coordinates of Teichmüller spaces of Riemann surfaces

Thomas Gauglhofer

Using an algebraic formalism based on matrices in SL(2,R), we explicitly give the Teichmüller spaces of Riemann surfaces of signature (0,4) (X pieces), (1,2) ("Fish" pieces) and (2,0) in trace coordinates. The approach, based upon gluing together two building blocks (Q and Y pieces), is then extended to tree-like pants decomposition for higher signatures (g,n) and limit cases such as surfaces with cusps or cone-like singularities. Given the Teichmüller spaces, we establish a set of generators of their modular groups for signatures (0,4), (1,2) and (2,0) in trace coordinates using transformations acting separately on the building blocks and an algorithm on dividing geodesics. The fact that these generators act particularly nice in trace coordinates gives further motivation to this choice (rather then the one of Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates). This allows us to solve the Riemann moduli problem for X pieces, "Fish" pieces and surfaces of genus 2; i.e. to give the moduli spaces as the fundamental domains for the action of the modular groups on the Teichmüller spaces. In this context, we also give an algorithm deciding whether two Riemann surfaces of signatures (0,4), (1,2) or (2,0) given by points in the Teichmüller space are isometric or not. As a consequence, we show the following two results concerning simple closed geodesics: On any purely hyperbolic Riemann surface (containing neither cusps nor cone-like singularities), the longest of two simple closed geodesics that intersect one another n times is of length at least ln, a sharp constant independent of the surface. We explicitly give ln for n = 1,2,3 and study its behaviour when n goes to infinity. X pieces are spectrally rigid with respect to the length spectrum of simple closed geodesics.

EPFL2006

Sur la méthode de Buser-Silhol pour l'uniformisation des surfaces de Riemann hyperelliptiques

Grégoire Aubry

The Uniformization Theorem due to Koebe and Poincaré implies that every compact Riemann surface of genus greater or equal to 2 can be endowed with a metric of constant curvature – 1. On the other hand, a compact Riemann surface is a complex algebraic curve and is therefore described by a polynomial equation with complex coefficients. The uniformization problem is then to link explicitly these two descriptions. In [BS05b], Peter Buser and Robert Silhol develop a new uniformization method for compact Riemann surfaces of genus two. Given such a surface S, the method describes a polynomial equation of an algebraic curve conformally equivalent to S. However, in this method appear a complex number τ BS and a function f BS which is holomorphic on the unit disk, both being characterized by some functional equations. This means that τ BS, f BS are given implicitly. P. Buser and R. Silhol then approximate them numerically by a complex number τ and a polynomial p using the approximation method developped in [BS05a]. In cases where the equation of the algebraic curve is known, they notice that these approximations are very good. In this thesis we prove a convergence theorem for the approximation method of P. Buser and R. Silhol, and we propose an adaptation of their method that allows to solve some of the numerical problems to which it is prone. Moreover, we generalize this uniformization method to hyperelliptic Riemann surfaces of genus greater than 2, and we give some examples of numerical uniformization in genus 3.

EPFL2010

Capacities, Systoles and Jacobians of Riemann Surfaces

Björn Mützel

EPFL2011