Computing Shortest Cycles Using Universal Covering Space

Summary form only given. In this paper we generalize the shortest path algorithm to the shortest cycles in each homotopy class on a surface with arbitrary topology, utilizing the universal covering space (UCS) in algebraic topology. In order to store and handle the UCS, we propose a two-level data structure which is efficient for storage and easy to process. We also pointed several practical applications for our shortest cycle algorithms and the UCS data structure.