The surface of circumferences for Jenkins-Strebel differentials

Abstract

There are some existence problems of Jenkins-Strebel differentials on a Riemann surface. The one of them is to find a Jenkins-Strebel differential whose characteristic ring domains have given positive numbers as their circumferences, for any fixed underlying Riemann surface and core curves of the ring domains. However, the solution may not exist for some given underlying surface, core curves, and positive numbers. In this paper, we investigate the existence of such the solutions. Our method is to use the surface of circumferences, which is determined by the extremal problem for Jenkins-Strebel differentials. We can see degenerations of the characteristic ring domains of Jenkins-Strebel differentials by the surface. Moreover, we also consider the behavior of the surface when the underlying Riemann surface varies.