American Journal of Mathematics

abstract:

We present new free-curvature one-cycle sweepout estimates in Riemannian geometry, both on surfaces and in higher dimension. More precisely, we derive upper bounds on the length of one-parameter families of one-cycles sweeping out essential surfaces in closed Riemannian manifolds. In particular, we show that there exists a homotopically substantial one-cycle sweepout of the essential sphere in the complex projective space, endowed with an arbitrary Riemannian metric, whose one-cycle length is bounded in terms of the volume (or diameter) of the manifold. This is the first estimate on sweepout volume in higher dimension without curvature assumption. We also give a detailed account of the situation for compact Riemannian surfaces with or without boundary, in relation with questions raised by P.~Buser and L.~Guth.