Morse functions constructed by random walks

Abstract

We construct random Morse functions on surfaces by random walk and compute related distributions. We study the space of Morse functions through these random variables. We consider subspaces characterized by the surfaces with boundary obtained by cutting the closed domain surface of the Morse function at the levels of regular values. We consider Morse functions having a bounded number of critical points and one single local minimum. We find a small set of Morse functions which are close enough to any other Morse function in the sense that they share the same characterizing surfaces with boundary.