Volume entropy and lengths of homotopically independent loops

This paper presents a new inequality for closed Riemannian manifolds involving the volume entropy and the set of lengths of any family of homotopically independent loops based at the same point. This inequality implies a curvature free collar theorem, and is a reminescence of McShane's identity. Its proof is rather straightforward once we know the work by Lim [Lim08] on volume entropy for graphs.