We study unions of fundamental domains of a Fuchsian group, especially those with hyperbolic plane metric realizing the metric of the corresponding hyperbolic surface. We call these unions the \textit{geodesic covers} of the Fuchsian group or the hyperbolic surface. The paper contributes to showing that finiteness of geodesic covers is basically another characterization of geometrically finiteness. The resolution of geometrically finite case is based on Shimizu's lemma.
The set of axes of hyperbolic elements in a Fuchsian group depends on the commensurability class of the group. In fact, it has been conjectured that it determines the commensurability class and this has been verified in for groups of the second kind by G. Mess and for arithemetic groups by by D. Long and A. Reid. Here we show that the conjecture holds for almost all Fuchsian groups and explain why our method fails for arithemetic groups.
We prove that there is a true asymptotic formula for the number of one sided simple closed curves of length $\leq L$ on any Fuchsian real projective plane with three points removed. The exponent of growth is independent of the hyperbolic structure, and it is noninteger, in contrast to counting results of Mirzakhani for simple closed curves on orientable Fuchsian surfaces.
We show that the absolute value at zero of the Ruelle zeta function defined by the geodesic flow coincides with the higher-dimensional Reidemeister torsion for the unit tangent bundle over a 2-dimensional hyperbolic orbifold and a non-unitary representation of the fundamental group. Our proof is based on the integral expression of the Ruelle zeta function. This integral expression is derived from the functional equation of the Selberg zeta function for a discrete subgroup with elliptic elements in PSL(2;R). We also show that the asymptotic behavior of the higher-dimensional Reidemeister torsio…
In this paper, we prove that if a quasi-Fuchsian 3-manifold $M$ contains a simple closed geodesic with complex length $\Lscr=l+iθ$ such that $θ/l\gg{}1$, then it contains at least two minimal surfaces which are incompressible in $M$.
The action of the mapping class group of the thrice-punctured projective plane on its $\mathrm{GL}(2,\mathbb{C})$ character variety produces an algorithm for generating the simple length spectra of quasi-Fuchsian thrice-punctured projective planes. We apply this algorithm to quasi-Fuchsian representations of the corresponding fundamental group to prove: a sharp upper-bound for the length of its shortest geodesic, a McShane identity and the surprising result of non-polynomial growth for the number of simple closed geodesic lengths.
A compact Fuchsian manifold with boundary is a hyperbolic 3-manifold homeomorphic to $S_g \times [0; 1]$ such that the boundary component $S_g \times \{ 0\}$ is geodesic. We prove that a compact Fuchsian manifold with convex boundary is uniquely determined by the induced path metric on $S_g \times \{1\}$. We do not put further restrictions on the boundary except convexity.
We derive several results that describe the rate at which a generic geodesic makes excursions into and out of a cusp on a finite area hyperbolic surface and relate them to approximation with respect to the orbit of infinity for an associated Fuchsian group. This provides proofs of some well known theorems from metric diophantine approximation in the context of Fuchsian groups. It also gives new results in the classical setting.
Motivated by questions in detecting minimal surfaces in hyperbolic manifolds, we study the behavior of geometric flows in complete hyperbolic three-manifolds. In most cases the flows develop singularities in finite time. In this paper, we investigate the mean curvature flow in a class of complete hyperbolic 3-manifolds (Fuchsian manifolds) which are warped products of a closed surface of genus at least two and the real line. In particular, we prove that there exists a large class of closed initial surfaces, as geodesic graphs over the totally geodesic surface $Σ$, such that the mean curvature …
We prove that the hitting measure is singular with respect to Lebesgue measure for any random walk on a cocompact Fuchsian group generated by translations joining opposite sides of a symmetric hyperbolic polygon. Moreover, the Hausdorff dimension of the hitting measure is strictly less than 1. A similar statement is proven for Coxeter groups. Along the way, we prove for cocompact Fuchsian groups a purely geometric inequality for geodesic lengths, strongly reminiscent of the Anderson-Canary-Culler-Shalen inequality for free Kleinian groups.
We parametrize the commensurability classes of curves on Shimura surfaces that are totally geodesic, i.e., the commensurability classes of so-called $\mathbb{C}$-Fuchsian subgroups. In particular, if a Shimura surface contains one commensurability class of totally geodesic curves, it contains infinitely many.
This paper determines which orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds contain simple closed geodesics. The Fuchsian group corresponding to the thrice-punctured sphere generates the only example of a complete non-elementary orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold that does not contain a simple closed geodesic. We do not assume that the manifold is geometrically finite or that it has finitely generated fundamental group.
This paper proves that every finite volume hyperbolic 3-manifold M contains a ubiquitous collection of closed, immersed, quasi-Fuchsian surfaces. These surfaces are ubiquitous in the sense that their preimages in the universal cover separate any pair of disjoint, non-asymptotic geodesic planes. The proof relies in a crucial way on the corresponding theorem of Kahn and Markovic for closed 3-manifolds. As a corollary of this result and a companion statement about surfaces with cusps, we recover Wise's theorem that the fundamental group of M acts freely and cocompactly on a CAT(0) cube complex.
We study geodesics on a planar Riemann surface of infinite type having a single infinite end. Of particular interest is the class of geodesics that go out the infinite end in a most efficient manner. We investigate properties of these geodesics and relate them to the structure of the boundary of a Dirichlet polygon for a Fuchsian group representing the surface.
In this article, we give explicit examples of infinitely many non-commensurable (non-arithmetic) hyperbolic $3$-manifolds admitting exactly $k$ totally geodesic surfaces for any positive integer $k$, answering a question of Bader, Fisher, Miller and Stover. The construction comes from a family of twist knot complements and their dihedral covers. The case $k=1$ arises from the uniqueness of an immersed totally geodesic thrice-punctured sphere, answering a question of Reid. Applying the proof techniques of the main result, we explicitly construct non-elementary maximal Fuchsian subgroups of infi…
L. Louder showed that any generating tuple of a surface group is Nielsen equivalent to a stabilized standard generating tuple i.e. $(a_1,\ldots ,a_k,1\ldots, 1)$ where $(a_1,\ldots ,a_k)$ is the standard generating tuple. This implies in particular that irreducible generating tuples, i.e. tuples that are not Nielsen equivalent to a tuple of the form $(g_1,\ldots ,g_k,1)$, are minimal. In a previous work the first author generalized Louder's ideas and showed that all irreducible and non-standard generating tuples of sufficiently large Fuchsian groups can be represented by so-called almost orbif…
Given a measured geodesic lamination on a hyperbolic surface, grafting the surface along multiples of the lamination defines a path in Teichmuller space, called the grafting ray. We show that every grafting ray, after reparametrization, is a Teichmuller quasi-geodesic and stays in a bounded neighborhood of a Teichmuller geodesic. As part of our approach, we show that grafting rays have controlled dependence on the starting point. That is, for any measured geodesic lamination Lambda, the map of Teichmuller space which is defined by grafting along Lambda is L-Lipschitz with respect to the Teichm…
Greg McShane introduced a remarkable identity for the lengths of simple closed geodesics on cusped hyperbolic surfaces. This was subsequently generalized by the authors to hyperbolic cone-surfaces, possibly with cusps and/or geodesic boundary. In this paper, we generalize the identity further to the case of classical Schottky groups. As a consequence, we obtain some surprising new identities in the case of fuchsian Schottky groups. For classical Schottky groups of rank 2, we also give generalizations of the Weierstrass identities, first given by McShane.
Identifying parallel sides of a collection of Euclidean polygons yields a flat surface with cone points of angles multiples of 2 pi, naturally a compact Riemann surface but also an algebraic curve, and a hyperbolic surface. In general two different metrics on a surface have no geodesic arcs in common, but in special cases the surface is decomposed into polygons geodesic for both the flat and the hyperbolic metric. This is the case for certain surfaces which are translation and half-turn tiled by an Euclidean rectangle. We explore them in this paper. Their multi-geodesic tessellation provides a…
Given a measure on the Thurston boundary of Teichmueller space, one can pick a geodesic ray joining some basepoint to a randomly chosen point on the boundary. Different choices of measures may yield typical geodesics with different geometric properties. In particular, we consider two families of measures: the ones which belong to the Lebesgue or visual measure class, and harmonic measures for random walks on the mapping class group generated by a distribution with finite first moment in the word metric. We consider the ratio between the word metric and the relative metric of approximating mapp…
We discuss two generalizations of the collar lemma. The first is the stable neighborhood theorem which says that a (not necessarily simple) closed geodesic in a hyperbolic surface has a \lq\lq stable neighborhood\rq\rq whose width only depends on the length of the geodesic. As an application, we show that there is a lower bound for the length of a closed geodesic having crossing number $k$ on a hyperbolic surface. This lower bound tends to infinity with $k$. Our second generalization is to totally geodesic hypersurfaces of hyperbolic manifolds. Namely, we construct a tubular neighborhood funct…
It is shown that every non-compact hyperbolic manifold of finite volume has a finite cover admitting a geodesic ideal triangulation. Also, every hyperbolic manifold of finite volume with non-empty, totally geodesic boundary has a finite regular cover which has a geodesic partially truncated triangulation. The proofs use an extension of a result due to Long and Niblo concerning the separability of peripheral subgroups.
Let $(S,h)$ be a closed hyperbolic surface and $M$ be a quasi-Fuchsian 3-manifold. We consider incompressible maps from $S$ to $M$ that are critical points of an energy functional $F$ which is homogeneous of degree $1$. These "minimizing" maps are solutions of a non-linear elliptic equation, and reminiscent of harmonic maps -- but when the target is Fuchsian, minimizing maps are minimal Lagrangian diffeomorphisms to the totally geodesic surface in $M$. We prove the uniqueness of smooth minimizing maps from $(S,h)$ to $M$ in a given homotopy class. When $(S,h)$ is fixed, smooth minimizing maps …
Among other things, we prove the following two topologcal statements about closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds. First, every rational second homology class of a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold has a positve integral multiple represented by an oriented connected closed $π_1$-injectively immersed quasi-Fuchsian subsurface. Second, every rationally null-homologous, $π_1$-injectively immersed oriented closed 1-submanifold in a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold has an equidegree finite cover which bounds an oriented compact $π_1$-injective immersed quasi-Fuchsian subsurface. In part, we exploit techniques develo…
In a paper of Menasco and Reid, it is conjectured that there exist no hyperbolic knots in S^3 for which the complement contains a closed embedded totally geodesic surface. In this note, we show that one can get "as close as possible" to a counter-example. Specifically, we construct a sequence of hyperbolic knots {K_n} with complements containing closed embedded essential surfaces having principal curvatures converging to zero as n tends to infinity. We also construct a family of two-component links for which the complements contain closed embedded totally geodesic surfaces of arbitrarily large…
An unknotting tunnel in a 3-manifold with boundary is a properly embedded arc, the complement of an open neighborhood of which is a handlebody. A geodesic with endpoints on the cusp boundary of a hyperbolic 3-manifold and perpendicular to the cusp boundary is called a vertical geodesic. Given a vertical geodesic in a hyperbolic 3-manifold M, we find sufficient conditions for it to be an unknotting tunnel. In particular, if the vertical geodesic corresponds to a 4-bracelet, 5-bracelet or 6-bracelet in the universal cover and has short enough length, it must be an unknotting tunnel. Furthermore,…
Let M be a closed hyperbolic three manifold. We construct closed surfaces which map by immersions into M so that for each one the corresponding mapping on the universal covering spaces is an embedding, or, in other words, the corresponding induced mapping on fundamental groups is an injection.
We investigate the maximal solid tubes around short simple geodesics in hyperbolic three-manifolds and how complex length of curves relate to closed, incompressible, least area minimal surfaces. As applications, we prove, there are some closed hyperbolic three-manifolds fibering over the circle which are not foliated by closed incompressible minimal surfaces diffeomorphic to the fiber. We also show, the existence of quasi-Fuchsian manifolds containing arbitrarily many embedded closed incompressible minimal surfaces. Our strategy is to prove main theorems under natural geometric conditions on t…
We consider the Weil--Petersson (WP) metric on the modular surface. We lift WP geodesics to the universal cover of the modular surface and analyse geometric properties of the lifts as paths in the hyperbolic metric on the universal cover. For any pair of distinct points in the thick part of the universal cover, we prove that the WP and hyperbolic geodesic segments that connect the pair, fellow-travel in the thick part and all deviations between these segments arise during cusp excursions. Furthermore, we give a quantitative analysis of the deviation during an excursion. We leverage the fellow …
This paper's theme is the relation between several classical and well-known objects: triangle Fuchsian groups, quasi-homogeneous singularities of plane curves, torus knot complements in the 3-sphere. Torus knots are the only nontrivial knots whose complements admit transitive Lie group actions. In fact S^3\K_{p,q} is diffeomorphic to a coset space of the universal covering group of PSL_2(R) with respect to a discrete subgroup G contained in the preimage of a (p,q,\infty)-triangle Fuchsian group. The existence of such a diffeomorphism between is known from a general topological classification o…
In this note we show that for any hyperbolic surface S, the number of geodesics of length bounded above by L in the mapping class group orbit of a fixed closed geodesic with a single double point is asymptotic to L raised to the dimension of the Teichmuller space of S. Since closed geodesics with one double point fall into a finite number of orbits under the mapping class group of S, we get the same asympotic estimate for the number of such geodesics of length bounded by L. We also use our (elementary) methods to do a more precise study of geodesics with a single double point on a punctured to…
For two generator free Fuchsian groups, the quotient three manifold is a genus two solid handlebody and its boundary is a hyperelliptic Riemann surface. The convex core is also a hyperelliptic Riemann surface. We find the Weierstrass points of both of these surfaces. We then generalize the notion of a hyperelliptic Riemann surface to a ``hyperelliptic'' three manifold. We show that the handlebody has a unique order two isometry fixing six unique geodesic line segments, which we call the {\sl Weierstrass lines} of the handlebody. The Weierstrass lines are, of course, the analogue of the Weierst…
We prove that some paths of contactomorphisms of $\mathbb{R}^{2n} \times S^1$ endowed with its standard contact structure are geodesics for different norms defined on the identity component of the group of compactly supported contactomorphisms and its universal cover. We characterize these geodesics by giving conditions on the Hamiltonian functions that generate them. For every norm considered we show that the norm of a contactomorphism that is the time-one of such a geodesic can be expressed in terms of the maximum of the absolute value of the corresponding Hamiltonian function. In particular…
Let $M$ be a geometrically finite acylindrical hyperbolic 3-manifold and let $M^*$ denote the interior of the convex core of M. We show that any geodesic plane in $M^*$ is either closed or dense, and that there are only countably many closed geodesic planes in $M^*$. These results were obtained earlier by McMullen, Mohammadi, and the second named author when M is convex cocompact. As a corollary we obtain that when $M$ covers an arithmetic hyperbolic 3-manifold $M_0$, the topological behavior of a geodesic plane in $M^*$ is governed by that of the corresponding plane in $M_0$. We construct a c…
We derive generalizations of McShane's identity for higher ranked surface group representations by studying a family of mapping class group invariant functions introduced by Goncharov and Shen which generalize the notion of horocycle lengths. In particular, we obtain McShane-type identities for finite-area cusped convex real projective surfaces by generalizing the Birman--Series geodesic scarcity theorem. More generally, we establish McShane-type identities for positive surface group representations with loxodromic boundary monodromy, as well as McShane-type inequalities for general rank posit…
