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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Alpert, Hannah, Banerjee, Arka, Papasoglu, Panos
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21126
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Table of Contents:
  • We investigate the following question: Do there exist Riemannian polyhedra $X$ such that the 1-Uryson width of their universal covers $\mathrm{UW}_1(\widetilde{X})$ is bounded but $\mathrm{UW}_1(X)$ is arbitrarily large? We rule out two specific cases: when $π_1(X)$ is virtually cyclic and when $X$ is a Riemannian surface. More specifically, we show that if $X$ is a compact polyhedron with a virtually cyclic fundamental group, then its 1-Uryson width is bounded by the 1-Uryson width of its universal cover $\widetilde{X}$. Precisely: $$\mathrm{UW}_1(X) \leq 6 \cdot \mathrm{UW}_1(\widetilde{X}).$$ We show that if $X$ is a Riemannian surface with boundary then $$\mathrm{UW}_1(X) \leq \mathrm{UW}_1(\widetilde{X}).$$ Furthermore, we show that if there exist spaces $X$ for which $\mathrm{UW}_1(\widetilde{X})$ is bounded while $\mathrm{UW}_1(X)$ is arbitrarily large, then such examples must already appear in low dimensions. In particular, such $X$ can be found among Riemannian $2$-complexes.