This paper is about a type of quantitative density of closed geodesics and orthogeodesics on complete finite-area hyperbolic surfaces. The main results are upper bounds on the length of the shortest closed geodesic and the shortest doubly truncated orthogeodesic that are $\varepsilon$-dense on a given compact set on the surface.

Our main point of focus is the set of closed geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces. For any fixed integer k, we are interested in the set of all closed geodesics with at least k (but possibly more) self-intersections. Among these, we consider those of minimal length and investigate their self-intersection numbers. We prove that their intersection numbers are upper bounded by a universal linear function in k (which holds for any hyperbolic surface). Moreover, in the presence of cusps, we get bounds which imply that the self-intersection numbers behave asymptotically like k for growing k.

Using Roelcke’s formula for the Green function, we explicitly construct a basis in the kernel of the adjoint Laplacian on a compact polyhedral surface $X$ and compute the $S$-matrix of $X$ at the zero value of the spectral parameter. We apply these results to study various self-adjoint extensions of a symmetric Laplacian on a compact polyhedral surface of genus two with a single conical point. It turns out that the behaviour of the $S$-matrix at the zero value of the spectral parameter is sensitive to the geometry of the polyhedron.

Explicit examples of both hyperelliptic and non-hyperelliptic curves which cannot be defined over their field of moduli are known in the literature. In this paper, we construct a tower of explicit examples of such kind of curves. In that tower there are both hyperelliptic curves and non-hyperelliptic curves.

It is a theorem of Bers that any closed hyperbolic surface admits a pants decomposition consisting of curves of bounded length where the bound only depends on the topology of the surface. The question of the quantification of the optimal constants has been well studied, and the best upper bounds to date are linear in genus, due to a theorem of Buser and Seppälä. The goal of this note is to give a short proof of a linear upper bound that slightly improves the best known bound.

A real algebraic curve of genus g is a pair (S,〈 τ 〉), where S is a closed Riemann surface of genus g and τ: S → S is a symmetry, that is, an anti-conformal involution. A Schottky uniformization of (S,〈 τ 〉) is a tuple (Ω,Γ,P:Ω → S), where Γ is a Schottky group with region of discontinuity Ω and P:Ω → S is a regular holomorphic cover map with Γ as its deck group, so that there exists an extended Möbius transformation $\widehat{\tau}$ keeping Ω invariant with P o $\widehat{\tau}$=τ o P. The extended Kleinian group K=〈 Γ, $\widehat{\tau}$〉 is called an extended Schottky groups of rank g. The interest on Schottky uniformizations rely on the fact that they provide the lowest uniformizations of closed Riemann surfaces. In this paper we obtain a structural picture of extended Schottky groups in terms of Klein–Maskit's combination theorems and some basic extended Schottky groups. We also provide some insight of the structural picture in terms of the group of automorphisms of S which are reflected by the Schottky uniformization. As a consequence of our structural description of extended Schottky groups, we get alternative proofs to results due to Kalliongis and McCullough (J. Kalliongis and D. McCullough, Orientation-reversing involutions on handlebodies, Trans. Math. Soc. 348(5) (1996), 1739–1755) on orientation-reversing involutions on handlebodies.

Historical note. A non-orientable surface of genus 2 (meaning 2 cross-caps) is popularly known as the Klein bottle. However, the term Klein surface comes from Felix Klein's book “On Riemann's Theory of Algebraic Functions and their Integrals” (1882) where he introduced such surfaces in the final chapter.

We consider families of quasiplatonic Riemann surfaces characterised by the fact that – as in the case of Fermat curves of exponent n – their underlying regular (Walsh) hypermap is an embedding of the complete bipartite graph Kn,n, where n is an odd prime power. We show that these surfaces, regarded as algebraic curves, are all defined over abelian number fields. We determine their orbits under the action of the absolute Galois group, their minimal fields of definition and in some easier cases their defining equations. The paper relies on group – and graph – theoretic results by G. A. Jones, R. Nedela and M. Škoviera about regular embeddings of the graphs Kn,n [7] and generalises the analogous results for maps obtained in [9], partly using different methods.

In this paper, we obtain algebraic equations for all genus 2 compact Riemann surfaces that admit a semi-regular (or uniform) covering of the Riemann sphere with more than two lifting symmetries. By a lifting symmetry, we mean an automorphism of the target surface which can be lifted to the covering. We restrict ourselves to the genus 2 surfaces in order to make computations easier and to make possible to find their algebraic equations as well. At the same time, the main ingredient (Main Proposition) depends neither on the genus, nor on the order of the group of lifting symmetries. Because of this, the paper can be thought as a generalisation for the non-normal case to the question of lifting automorphisms of a compact Riemann surface to a normal covering, treated, for instance, by E. Bujalance and M. Conder in a joint paper, or by P. Turbek solely.

A fundamental object in the theory of arithmetic surfaces is the Green's function associated to the canonical metric. Previous expressions for the canonical Green's function have relied on general functional analysis or, when using specific properties of the canonical metric, the classical Riemann theta function. In this article, we derive a new identity for the canonical Green's function involving the hyperbolic heat kernel. As an application of our results, we obtain bounds for the canonical Green's function through covers and for families of modular curves.

Schottky uniformizations are provided of every closed Riemann surface $S$ of genus $g \in \{3,4\}$ admitting the symmetric group ${\mathcal S}_{4}$ as group of conformal automorphisms. These Schottky uniformizations reflect the group ${\mathcal S}_{4}$ and permit concrete representations of ${\mathcal S}_{4}$ to be obtained in the respective symplectic group $\mbox{Sp}_{g}({\mathbb Z})$. Their corresponding fixed points, in the Siegel space, give principally polarized Abelian varieties of dimension $g$. For $g=3$ and for some cases of $g=4$ they turn out to be holomorphically equivalent to the product of elliptic curves.

Let $C$ be a genus 2 algebraic curve defined by an equation of the form $y^2\,{=}\,x(x^2\,{-}\,1)(x\,{-} a)(x\,{-}\,1/a)$. As is well known, the five accessory parameters for such an equation can all be expressed in terms of $a$ and the accessory parameter $\frak b$ corresponding to $a$. The main result of the paper is that if $a'\,{=}\,\sqrt{1\,{-}\,{a}^2}$, which in general yields a non-isomorphic curve $C'$, then $\acb'a'({a'}^2\,{-}\,1) {=}\,{-}\frac38\,{-}\,\acb\,a\,({a}^2\,{-}\,1)$.

This is proven by it being shown how the uniformizing function from the unit disk to $C'$ can be explicitly described in terms of the uniformizing function for $C$.

We propose certain obstructions for the existence of hyperelliptic splitting families of degenerations of curves. Moreover we determine the complete system of hyperelliptic atomic fibers of genus 3.

It is shown that the natural action of the absolute Galois group on the ideals defining principal congruence subgroups of certain nonarithmetic Fuchsian triangle groups is compatible with its action on the algebraic curves that these congruence groups uniformize.

We show that the order of an automorphism of an arithmetic Riemann surface of genus $g$ is not greater than $2g\,{-}\,2$, provided $g$ is large enough. This bound is an arithmetic analog of the classical Wiman bound. We prove that it is sharp and attained for any genus but in contrast to the general case the automorphisms of maximal order act without fixed points. This allows us to consider the automorphisms which act on arithmetic Riemann surfaces and have a given number of fixed points. For these automorphisms we describe the asymptotic behavior of their orders.

Using a classical generalization of Jacobi’s derivative formula, we give an explicit expression for Gunning’s prime form in genus 2 in terms of theta functions and their derivatives.

Let be a compact Riemann surface, be the complement of a nonvoid finite subset of and A() be the ring of finite sums of meromorphic functions in with finite divisor. In this paper it is proved that every nonzero f ∈ A() can be decomposed as a product αβ, where α is either a unit or a product of powers of irreducible elements of A(), uniquely determined by f up to multiplication by units, and β is a product of functions of the type eφ – 1, with φ holomorphic and nonconstant in . Furthermore, a similar result is obtained for a certain class of subrings of A().