There is no better upper bound. Suppose that your torus is the factor of the plane by integer lattice, and the metric is Euclidean. Let $a=m$ and $b=m+1$. These generate the lattice. And length of $ab$ is $\sqrt{4m^2+1}\sim 2m, m\to\infty$.
Alexandre Eremenko
- 91.8k
- 9
- 259
- 429