We present a brief but nearly self-contained proof of a formula for the Weil-Petersson Hessian of the geodesic length of a closed curve (either simple or not simple) on a hyperbolic surface. The formula is the sum of the integrals of two naturally defined positive functions over the geodesic, proving convexity of this functional over Teichmuller space (due to Wolpert (1987)). We then estimate this Hessian from below in terms of local quantities and distance along the geodesic. The formula extends to proper arcs on punctured hyperbolic surfaces, and the estimate to laminations. Wolpert's result that the Thurston metric is a multiple of the Weil-Petersson metric directly follows on taking a limit of the formula over an appropriate sequence of curves. We give further applications to upper bounds of the Hessian, especially near pinching loci, and recover through a geometric argument Wolpert's recent result on the convexity of length to the half-power.
The universal Teichmüller space is an infinitely dimensional generalization of the classical Teichmüller space of Riemann surfaces. It carries a natural Hilbert structure, on which one can define a natural Riemannian metric, the Weil-Petersson metric. In this paper we investigate the Weil-Petersson Riemannian curvature operator $\tilde{Q}$ of the universal Teichmüller space with the Hilbert structure, and prove the following: (i) $\tilde{Q}$ is non-positive definite. (ii) $\tilde{Q}$ is a bounded operator. (iii) $\tilde{Q}$ is not compact; the set of the spectra of $\tilde{Q}$ is not discrete.…
Over the past two decades the theory of the Weil-Petersson metric has been extended to general Teichmüller spaces of infinite type, including for example the universal Teichmüller space. In this paper we give a survey of the main results in the Weil-Petersson geometry of infinite-dimensional Teichmüller spaces. This includes the rigorous definition of complex Hilbert manifold structures, Kähler geometry and global analysis, and generalizations of the period mapping. We also discuss the motivations of the theory in representation theory and physics beginning in the 1980s. Some examples of the a…
The Teichmüller curve is the fiber space over Teichmüller space of closed Riemann surfaces, where the fiber over a point in Teichmüller space is the underlying surface. We derive formulas for sectional curvatures on the Teichmüller curve. In particular, our method can be applied to investigate the geometry of the Weil-Petersson geodesic as a three-manifold, and the degeneration of the curvatures near the infinity of the augmented Teichmüller space along a Weil-Petersson geodesic, as well as the minimality of hyperbolic surfaces in this three-manifold.
In this paper we study the systole function along Weil-Petersson geodesics. We show that the square root of the systole function is uniformly Lipschitz on Teichmüller space endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric. As an application, we study the growth of the Weil-Petersson inradius of moduli space of Riemann surfaces of genus $g$ with $n$ punctures as a function of $g$ and $n$. We show that the Weil-Petersson inradius is comparable to $\sqrt{\ln{g}}$ with respect to $g$, and is comparable to $1$ with respect to $n$. Moreover, we also study the asymptotic behavior, as $g$ goes to infinity, of t…
Let $S_g$ be a closed surface of genus $g$ and $\mathbb{M}_g$ be the moduli space of $S_g$ endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric. In this paper we investigate the Weil-Petersson curvatures of $\mathbb{M}_g$ for large genus $g$. First, we study the asymptotic behavior of the extremal Weil-Petersson holomorphic sectional curvatures at certain thick surfaces in $\mathbb{M}_g$ as $g \to \infty$. Then we prove two curvature properties on the whole space $\mathbb{M}_g$ as $g\to \infty$ in a probabilistic way.
We shall show that $q$-semipositivity of the vector bundle $E$ over a Kähler total space $\mathcal X$ implies the Griffiths-semipositivity of the $q$-th direct image of $\mathcal O(K_{\mathcal X/B}\otimes E)$. As an application, we shall give a negative-curvature criterion for the generalized Weil-Petersson metric on the base manifold.
On a convex body in a Euclidean space, we introduce a new variational formulation for its Funk metric, a Finsler metric compatible with the tautological Finsler structure of the convex body. We generalize the metric on Teichmuller spaces with the Weil-Petersson distance function. A set of similarities the resulting metric structure shares with Thurston's asymmetric metric is noted.
We find bounds for Weil-Petersson holomorphic sectional curvature, and the Weil-Petersson curvature operator in several regimes, that do not depend on the topology of the underlying surface. Among other results, we show that the minimal (most negative) eigenvalue of the curvature operator at any point in the Teichmüller space $\Teich(S_g)$ of a closed surface $S_g$ of genus $g$ is uniformly bounded away from zero. Restricting to a thick part of $\Teich(S_g)$, we show that the minimal eigenvalue is uniformly bounded below by an explicit constant which does not depend on the topology of the surf…
We show that the strong asymptotic class of Weil-Petersson (WP) geodesics with narrow end invariant and bounded annular coefficients is determined by the forward ending lamination. This generalizes the Recurrent Ending Lamination Theorem of Brock-Masur-Minsky. As an application we provide a symbolic condition for divergence of WP geodesic rays in the moduli space.
We prove that any mapping torus of a pseudo-Anosov mapping class with bounded normalized Weil-Petersson translation length contains a finite set of transverse and level closed curves, and drilling out this set of curves results in one of a finite number of cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds. The number of manifolds in the finite list depends only on the bound for normalized translation length. We also prove a complementary result that explains the necessity of removing level curves by producing new estimates for the Weil-Petersson translation length of compositions of pseudo-Anosov mapping classes …
The Weil-Petersson metric for the moduli space of Riemann surfaces has negative sectional curvature. Surfaces represented in the complement of a compact set in the moduli space have short geodesics. At such surfaces the Weil-Petersson metric is approximately a product metric. An almost product metric has sections with almost vanishing curvature. We bound the sectional curvature away from zero in terms of the product of lengths of short geodesics on Riemann surfaces. We give examples and an expectation for the actual vanishing rate.
We consider the Riemann moduli space $\mathcal M_γ$ of conformal structures on a compact surface of genus $γ>1$ together with its Weil-Petersson metric $g_{\mathrm{WP}}$. Our main result is that $g_{\mathrm{WP}}$ admits a complete polyhomogeneous expansion in powers of the lengths of the short geodesics up to the singular divisors of the Deligne-Mumford compactification of $\mathcal M_γ$.
This is a survey paper on the topic of Weil-Petersson geometry of Teichmuller spaces. Even though historically the subject has been developed as a branch of complex analysis, the treatment here is from the view-point of differential geometry, much influenced by the works of Eells, Earle, Fischer, Tromba and Wolpert over the several decades. The Weil-Petersson geometry has negative sectional curvature, and the main theme of this article is to exploit the convexity of the Weil-Petersson distance function induced by the negativity of the curvature, from Riemannian geometric approaches as well as …
Harmonic extension of Weil-Petersson circle homeomorphisms
Institut de Recherche Mathématique Avancée, UMR 7501, Université de Strasbourg et CNRS（斯特拉斯堡大学数学高级研究所）；YMSC, Tsinghua University（清华大学高等研究院）；Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications（北京国际数学研究中心）
In this paper we study the injectivity radius based at a fixed point along Weil-Petersson geodesics. We show that the square root of the injectivity radius based at a fixed point is $ 0.3884$-Lipschitz on Teichmüller space endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric. As an application we reprove that the square root of the systole function is uniformly Lipschitz on Teichmüller space endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric, where the Lipschitz constant can be chosen to be $0.5492$. Applications to asymptotic geometry of moduli space of Riemann surfaces for large genus will also be discussed.
In this paper we prove that the limit set of any Weil-Petersson geodesic ray with uniquely ergodic ending lamination is a single point in the Thurston compactification of Teichmüller space. On the other hand, we construct examples of Weil-Petersson geodesics with minimal nonuniquely ergodic ending laminations and limit set a circle in the Thurston compactification.
We introduce a simple and very fast algorithm that computes Weil-Petersson metrics on moduli spaces of polarized Calabi-Yau manifolds. Also, by using Donaldson's quantization link between the infinite and finite dimensional G.I.T quotients that describe moduli spaces of varieties, we define a natural sequence of Kaehler metrics. We prove that the sequence converges to the Weil-Petersson metric. We also develop an algorithm that numerically approximates such metrics, and hence the Weil-Petersson metric itself. Explicit examples are provided on a family of Calabi-Yau Quintic hypersurfaces in CP^…
Inspired by mirror symmetry, we investigate some differential geometric aspects of the space of Bridgeland stability conditions on a Calabi-Yau triangulated category. The aim is to develop theory of Weil-Petersson geometry on the stringy Kähler moduli space. A few basic examples are studied. In particular, we identify our Weil-Petersson metric with the Bergman metric on a Siegel modular variety in the case of the self-product of an elliptic curve.
Making use of the dual Bonahon-Schläfli formula, we prove that the dual volume of the convex core of a quasi-Fuchsian manifold $M$ is bounded by an explicit constant, depending only on the topology of $M$, times the Weil-Petersson distance between the hyperbolic structures on the upper and lower boundary components of the convex core of $M$.
Uniform bounds are developed for derivatives of solutions of the $2$-dimensional constant negative curvature equation and the Weil-Petersson metric for the Teichmüller and moduli spaces. The dependence of the bounds on the geometry of the underlying Riemann surface is studied. The comparisons between the $C^0$, $C^{2,α}$ and $L^2$ norms for harmonic Beltrami differentials are analyzed. Uniform bounds are given for the covariant derivatives of the Weil-Petersson curvature tensor in terms of the systoles of the underlying Riemann surfaces and the projections of the differentiation directions ont…
In this article we show that for every finite area hyperbolic surface $X$ of type $(g,n)$ and any harmonic Beltrami differential $μ$ on $X$, then the magnitude of $μ$ at any point of small injectivity radius is uniform bounded from above by the ratio of the Weil-Petersson norm of $μ$ over the square root of the systole of $X$ up to a uniform positive constant multiplication. We apply the uniform bound above to show that the Weil-Petersson Ricci curvature, restricted at any hyperbolic surface of short systole in the moduli space, is uniformly bounded from below by the negative reciprocal of the…
We introduce a method for constructing Weil-Petersson (WP) geodesics with certain behavior in the Teichmüller space. This allows us to study the itinerary of geodesics among the strata of the WP completion and its relation to subsurface projection coefficients of their end invariants. As an application we demonstrate the disparity between short curves in the universal curve over a WP geodesic and those of the associated hyperbolic $3$-manifold.
In general, it is difficult to measure distances in the Weil-Petersson metric on Teichmüller space. Here we consider the distance between strata in the Weil-Petersson completion of Teichmüller space of a surface of finite type. Wolpert showed that for strata whose closures do not intersect, there is a definite separation independent of the topology of the surface. We prove that the optimal value for this minimal separation is a constant $δ_{1,1}$ and show that it is realized exactly by strata whose nodes intersect once. We also give a nearly sharp estimate for $δ_{1,1}$ and give a lower bound …
Fix a number $g>1$, let $S$ be a close surface of genus $g$, and $Teich(S)$ be the Teichmüller space of $S$ endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric. In this paper we show that the Riemannian sectional curvature operator of $Teich(S)$ is non-positive definite. As an application we show that any twist harmonic map from rank-one hyperbolic spaces $H_{Q,m}=Sp(m,1)/Sp(m)\cdot Sp(1)$ or $H_{O,2}=F_{4}^{-20}/SO(9)$ into $Teich(S)$ is a constant.
In this paper we construct examples of Weil-Petersson geodesics with nonminimal ending laminations which have 1-dimensional limit sets in the Thurston compactification of Teichmüller space.
A 2008 general overview on Weil-Petersson geometry is offered. A preliminary plan for the subsequent CBMS lectures at Central Connecticut State University is included. Mirzakhani's solution of Witten-Kontsevich is not included - this work essentially requires its own lectures. Lectures on Mirzakhani's Witten-Kontsevich were given at the 2011 Park City Mathematics Institute. Research on WP geometry coming after 2008 includes the Brock-Masur-Minsky second paper, Asymptotics of WP geodesics II: bounded geometry and unbounded entropy; the Burns-Masur-Wilkinson, The WP geodesic flow is ergodic; and…
We study the spectral geometric properties of the scalar Laplace-Beltrami operator associated to the Weil-Petersson metric $g_{\mathrm{WP}}$ on $\mathcal M_γ$, the Riemann moduli space of surfaces of genus $γ> 1$. This space has a singular compactification with respect to $g_{\mathrm{WP}}$, and this metric has crossing cusp-edge singularities along a finite collection of simple normal crossing divisors. We prove first that the scalar Laplacian is essentially self-adjoint, which then implies that its spectrum is discrete. The second theorem is a Weyl asymptotic formula for the counting function…
