The extremal length systole of the cube punctured at its vertices

Abstract

We prove that the extremal length systole of the cube punctured at its vertices is realized by the 12 curves surrounding its edges and give a characterization of the corresponding quadratic differentials, allowing us to estimate its value to high precision. The proof uses a mixture of exact calculations done using branched covers and elliptic integrals, together with estimates obtained using either the geometry of geodesic trajectories on the cube or explicit conformal maps.