Reduction of Morse Functions on Surfaces to Canonical Form by Smooth Deformation

Relatively recently in works [3], [4] the topological classification of smooth Hamiltonian systems with one degree of freedom was obtained. When we study the stability of obtained topological invariants, the following natural question arised: is the space of all Morse functions with fixed number of minima and maxima on a closed surface connected? The present paper discusses this question and gives an algorithm of reduction of any Morse function on a closed orientable surface to the so-called canonical form.