Let $S$ be a closed, orientable surface of genus at least 2. The cotangent bundle of the "hyperbolic'' Teichmüller space of $S$ can be identified with the space $\CP$ of complex projective structures on $S$ through measured laminations, while the cotangent bundle of the "complex'' Teichmüller space can be identified with $\CP$ through the Schwarzian derivative. We prove that the resulting map between the two cotangent spaces, although not smooth, is symplectic. The proof uses a variant of the renormalized volume defined for hyperbolic ends.
We construct a new Riemannian metric on Goldman space $\mathcal{B}(S)$, the space of the equivalence classes of convex projective structures on the surface $S$, and then prove the new metric, as well as the metric of Darvishzadeh and Goldman, restricts to be the Weil-Petersson metric on Teichm$\ddot{u}$ller space, embedded as a submanifold of Goldman space $\mathcal{B}(S)$. Moreover, Teichm$\ddot{u}$ller space endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric then is totally geodesic in the Riemannian manifold $\mathcal{B}(S)$.
Nicolas-Auguste Tissot (1824--1897) was a French mathematician and cartographer. He introduced a tool which became known among geographers under the name ``Tissot indicatrix'', and which was widely used during the first half of the twentieth century in cartography. This is a graphical representation of a field of ellipses, indicating at each point of a geographical map the distorsion of this map, both in direction and in magnitude. Each ellipse represented at a given point is the image of an infinitesimal circle in the domain of the map (generally speaking, a sphere representing the surface of…
Given a closed surface endowed with a volume form, we equip the space of compatible Riemannian structures with the structure of an infinite-dimensional symplectic manifold. We show that the natural action of the group of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms by push-forward has a group-valued momentum map that assigns to a Riemannian metric the canonical bundle. We then deduce that the Teichmüller space and the moduli space of Riemann surfaces can be realized as symplectic orbit reduced spaces.
A hyperbolic 0-metric on a surface with boundary is a hyperbolic metric on its interior, exhibiting the boundary behavior of the standard metric on the Poincaré disk. Consider the infinite-dimensional Teichmüller spaces of hyperbolic 0-metrics on oriented surfaces with boundary, up to diffeomorphisms fixing the boundary and homotopic to the identity. We show that these spaces have natural symplectic structures, depending only on the choice of an invariant metric on sl(2,R). We prove that these Teichmüller spaces are Hamiltonian Virasoro spaces for the action of the universal cover of the group…
We characterization hyperbolic metrics on compact surfaces with boundary using a variational principle. As a consequence, a new parametrization of the Teichmuller space of compact surface with boundary is produced. In the new parametrization, the Teichmuller space becomes an open convex polytope. It is conjectured that the Weil-Petersson symplectic form can be expressed explicitly in terms of the new coordinate.
Let S be an infinite-dimensional manifold of all symplectic, or hyperkahler, structures on a compact manifold M, and $Diff_0$ the connected component of its diffeomorphism group. The quotient $S/\Diff_0$ is called the Teichmuller space of symplectic (or hyperkahler) structures on M. MBM classes on a hyperkahler manifold M are cohomology classes which can be represented by a minimal rational curve on a deformation of M. We determine the Teichmuller space of hyperkahler structures on a hyperkahler manifold, identifying any of its connected components with an open subset of the Grassmannian $SO(b…
We recall the fat-graph description of Riemann surfaces $Σ_{g,s,n}$ and the corresponding Teichmüller spaces $\mathfrak T_{g,s,n}$ with $s>0$ holes and $n>0$ bordered cusps in the hyperbolic geometry setting. If $n>0$, we have a bijection between the set of Thurston shear coordinates and Penner's $λ$-lengths and we can induce, on the one hand, the Poisson bracket on $λ$-lengths from the Poisson bracket on shear coordinates introduced by V.V.Fock in 1997 and, on the other hand, a symplectic structure $Ω_{\text{WP}}$ on the set of extended shear coordinates from Penner's symplectic structure on …
Let S be a compact connected oriented orbifold surface We show that using Bers simultaneous uniformization, the moduli space of projective structure on S can be mapped biholomorphically onto the total space of the holomorphic cotangent bundle of the Teichmüller space for S. The total space of the holomorphic cotangent bundle of the Teichmüller space is equipped with the Liouville symplectic form, and the moduli space of projective structures also has a natural holomorphic symplectic form. The above identification is proved to be compatible with these symplectic structures. Similar results are …
For a semisimple real Lie group $G$, we study topological properties of moduli spaces of polystable parabolic $G$-Higgs bundles over a Riemann surface with a divisor of finitely many distinct points. For a split real form of a complex simple Lie group, we compute the dimension of apparent parabolic Teichm{ü}ller components. In the case of isometry groups of classical Hermitian symmetric spaces of tube type, we provide new topological invariants for maximal parabolic $G$-Higgs bundles arising from a correspondence to orbifold Higgs bundles. Using orbifold cohomology we count the least number of…
We prove a generalization of Kawai theorem for the case of orbifold Riemann surface. The computation is based on a formula for the differential of a holomorphic map from the cotangent bundle of the Teichmüller space to the $\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{C})$-character variety, which allows to evaluate explicitly the pullback of Goldman symplectic form in the spirit of Riemann bilinear relations. As a corollary, we obtain a generalization of Goldman's theorem that the pullback of Goldman symplectic from on $\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{R})$-character variety is a symplectic form of the Weil-Petersson metric…
We study Hitchin representations and maximal symplectic representations of surface groups, which can be both thought of as generalisations of Fuchsian representations. We show that the corresponding energy functionals are proper on Teichmuller space. We also prove that the mapping class group acts properly on the corresponding moduli spaces. These two results follows from the fact these representations are well displacing which is a consequence they are associated to cross ratios. We state some applications.
In this paper, we review or introduce several differential structures on manifolds in the general setting of real and complex differential geometry, and apply this study to Teichmüller theory. We focus on bi-Lagrangian i.e. para-Kähler structures, which consist of a symplectic form and a pair of transverse Lagrangian foliations. We prove in particular that the complexification of a real-analytic Kähler manifold has a natural complex bi-Lagrangian structure. We then specialize to moduli spaces of geometric structures on closed surfaces, and show that old and new geometric features of these spac…
The Pontryagin forms on 1-jet bundle of Riemannian metrics, are shown to provide, in a natural way, diffeomorphism-invariant pre-symplectic structures on the space of Riemannian metrics for dimensions $n=4r-2$. The equivariant Pontryagin forms provide canonical moment maps for these structures. In dimension two, the symplectic reduction corresponding to the pre-symplectic form and its moment map attached to the first Pontryagin form, is proved to coincide with the Teichmüller space endowed with the Weil-Petersson symplectic form.
The landslide flow, introduced in [5], is a smoother analog of the earthquake flow on Teichmüller space which shares some of its key properties. We show here that further properties of earthquakes apply to landslides. The landslide flow is the Hamiltonian flow of a convex function. The smooth grafting map $sgr$ taking values in Teichmüller space, which is to landslides as grafting is to earthquakes, is proper and surjective with respect to either of its variables. The smooth grafting map $SGr$ taking values in the space of complex projective structures is symplectic (up to a multiplicative con…
In a family of compact, canonically polarized, complex manifolds the first variation of the lengths of closed geodesics is computed. As an application, we show the coincidence of the Fenchel-Nielsen and Weil-Petersson symplectic forms on the Teichmueller spaces of compact Riemann surfaces in a purely geometric way. The method can also be applied to situations like moduli spaces of weighted punctured Riemann surfaces, where the methods of Kleinian groups are not available.
This paper is a comprehensive introduction to the results of [7]. It grew as an expanded version of a talk given at INdAM Meeting Complex and Symplectic Geometry, held at Cortona in June 12-18, 2016. It deals with the construction of the Teichmüller space of a smooth compact manifold M (that is the space of isomorphism classes of complex structures on M) in arbitrary dimension. The main problem is that, whenever we leave the world of surfaces, the Teichmüller space is no more a complex manifold or an analytic space but an analytic Artin stack. We explain how to construct explicitly an atlas fo…
In this paper, we construct the moduli space of marked oper structures on a closed, oriented smooth surface of negative Euler characteristic as a holomorphic fiber bundle over Teichmüller space. We prove that the holonomy map from the space of marked oper structures to the moduli space of reductive flat bundles is a holomorphic immersion, generalizing the known results for the moduli space of marked complex projective structures. Finally, we prove that the symplectic structure on the moduli space of marked complex projective structures extends to a pre-symplectic structure on the moduli space …
We use minimal (or CMC) surfaces to describe 3-dimensional hyperbolic, anti-de Sitter, de Sitter or Minkowski manifolds. We consider whether these manifolds admit ``nice'' foliations and explicit metrics, and whether the space of these metrics has a simple description in terms of Teichmüller theory. In the hyperbolic settings both questions have positive answers for a certain subset of the quasi-Fuchsian manifolds: those containing a closed surface with principal curvatures at most 1. We show that this subset is parameterized by an open domain of the cotangent bundle of Teichmüller space. Thes…
Let $X$ be a non-compact geometrically finite hyperbolic 3-manifold without cusps of rank 1. The deformation space $\mc{H}$ of $X$ can be identified with the Teichmüller space $\mc{T}$ of the conformal boundary of $X$ as the graph of a section in $T^*\mc{T}$. We construct a Hermitian holomorphic line bundle $\mc{L}$ on $\mc{T}$, with curvature equal to a multiple of the Weil-Petersson symplectic form. This bundle has a canonical holomorphic section defined by $e^{\frac{1}π{\rm Vol}_R(X)+2πi\CS(X)}$ where ${\rm Vol}_R(X)$ is the renormalized volume of $X$ and $\CS(X)$ is the Chern-Simons invari…
Classical Kleinian groups are discrete subgroups of isometries of H n. The well-known theory of Kleinian groups starts with the definition of their associated limit set in the boundary of H n , and includes the geometric properties of the quotient hyperbolic space. This approach, naively applied, fails in the Lorentzian analogue anti-de Sitter space: discrete subgroups do not act properly discontinuously, and in many cases the set of accumulation points of orbits at the conformal boundary at infinity depends on the orbit. In this survey, we point out a way to extend this classical theory by in…
By studying the Higgs bundle equations with the gauge group replaced by the group of symplectic diffeomorphisms of the 2-sphere we encounter the notion of a folded hyperkaehler 4-manifold and conjecture the existence of a family of such metrics parametrised by an infinite-dimensional analogue of Teichmueller space.
For bordered surfaces S, we develop a complete parallel between the geometry of the combinatorial Teichmüller space $T_S^{comb}$ equipped with Kontsevich symplectic form $ω_K$, and then the usual Weil-Petersson geometry of Teichmüller space $T_S$. The basis for this is an identification of $T_S^{comb}$ with a space of measured foliations with transverse boundary conditions. We equip $T_S^{comb}$ with an analog of the Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates (defined similarly as Dehn-Thurston coordinates) and show they are Darboux for $ω_K$ (analog of Wolpert formula). We then set up the geometric recursio…
The SL(2)-character variety X of a closed surface M enjoys a natural complex-symplectic structure invariant under the mapping class group G of M. Using the ergodicity of G on the SU(2)-character variety, we deduce that every G-invariant meromorphic function on X is constant. The trace functions of closed curves on M determine regular functions which generate complex Hamiltonian flows. For simple closed curves, these complex Hamiltonian flows arise from holomorphic flows on the representation variety generalizing the Fenchel-Nielsen twist flows on Teichmueller space and the complex quakebend fl…
The space of smooth sections of a symplectic fiber bundle carries a natural symplectic structure. We provide a general framework to determine the momentum map for the action of the group of bundle automorphism on this space. Since, in general, this action does not admit a classical momentum map, we introduce the more general class of group-valued momentum maps which is inspired by the Poisson Lie setting. In this approach, the group-valued momentum map assigns to every section of the symplectic fiber bundle a principal circle-bundle with connection. The power of this general framework is illus…
Using global considerations, Mess proved that the moduli space of globally hyperbolic flat Lorentzian structures on $S\times\mathbb{R}$ is the tangent bundle of the Teichmüller space of $S$, if $S$ is a closed surface. One of the goals of this paper is to deepen this surprising occurrence and to make explicit the relation between the Mess parameters and the embedding data of any Cauchy surface. This relation is pointed out by using some specific properties of Codazzi tensors on hyperbolic surfaces. As a by-product we get a new Lorentzian proof of Goldman's celebrated result about the coinciden…
We show how characteristic classes determine equivariant prequantization bundles over the space of connections on a principal bundle. These bundles are shown to generalize the Chern-Simons line bundles to arbitrary dimensions. Our result applies to arbitrary bundles, and it is studied the action of both the gauge group and the automorphisms group. The action of the elements in the connected component of the identity of the group generalizes known results in the literature. The action of the elements not connected with the identity is shown to be determined by a characteristic class by using di…
