Lie algebras of curves and loop-bundles on surfaces

Juan Alonso, Miguel Paternain, Javier Peraza, Michael Reisenberger

Published 2022-03-03Version 1

W. Goldman and V. Turaev defined a Lie bialgebra structure on the $\mathbb Z$-module generated by free homotopy classes of loops of an oriented surface (i.e. the conjugacy classes of its fundamental group). We develop a generalization of this construction replacing homotopies by thin homotopies, based on the combinatorial approach given by M. Chas. We use it to give a geometric proof of a characterization of simple curves in terms of the Goldman-Turaev bracket, which was conjectured by Chas.