Loops in Reeb Graphs of <italic>n</italic>-Manifolds.

The Reeb graph of a smooth function on a connected smooth closed orientable <italic>n</italic>-manifold is obtained by contracting the connected components of the level sets to points. The number of loops in the Reeb graph is defined as its first Betti number. We describe the set of possible values of the number of loops in the Reeb graph in terms of the co-rank of the fundamental group of the manifold and show that all such values are realized for Morse functions and, except on surfaces, even for simple Morse functions. For surfaces, we describe the set of Morse functions with the number of loops in the Reeb graph equal to the genus of the surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]