We show that both Teichmuller space (with the Teichmuller metric) and the mapping class group (with a word metric) have geodesic divergence that is intermediate between the linear rate of flat spaces and the exponential rate of hyperbolic spaces. For every two geodesic rays in Teichmuller space, we find that their divergence is at most quadratic. Furthermore, this estimate is shown to be sharp via examples of pairs of rays with exactly quadratic divergence. The same statements are true for geodesic rays in the mapping class group. We explicitly describe efficient paths "near infinity" in both spaces.
We show that for every simple closed curve α, the extremal length and the hyperbolic length of αare quasi-convex functions along any Teichmuller geodesic. As a corollary, we conclude that, in Teichmuller space equipped with the Teichmuller metric, balls are quasi- convex.
In this paper, we obtain the explicit limit value of the Teichmüller distance between two Teichmüller geodesic rays which are determined by Jenkins-Strebel differentials having a common end point on the augmented Teichmüller space. Furthermore, we also obtain a condition under which these two rays are asymptotic. This is similar to a result of Farb and Masur.
We answer a question of Durham, Hagen, and Sisto, proving that a Teichmüller geodesic ray does not necessarily converge to a unique point in the hierarchically hyperbolic space boundary of Teichmüller space. In fact, we prove that the limit set can be almost anything allowed by the topology.
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…
Using geodesic length functions, we define a natural family of real codimension 1 subvarieties of Teichmüller space, namely the subsets where the lengths of two distinct simple closed geodesics are of equal length. We investigate the point set topology of the union of all such hypersurfaces using elementary methods. Finally, this analysis is applied to investigate the nature of the Markoff conjecture.
We review and organize some results describing the behavior of a Teichmüller geodesic and draw several applications: 1) We show that Teichmüller geodesics do not back track. 2) We show that a Teichmüller geodesic segment whose endpoints are in the thick part has the fellow travelling property. This fails when the endpoints are not necessarily in the thick part. 3) We show that if an edge of a Teichmüller geodesic triangle passes through the thick part, then it is close to one of the other egdes.
Given a compact orientable surface with finitely many punctures $Σ$, let $\Cal S(Σ)$ be the set of isotopy classes of essential unoriented simple closed curves in $Σ$. We determine a complete set of relations for a function from $\Cal S(Σ)$ to $\bold R$ to be the geodesic length function of a hyperbolic metric with geodesic boundary and cusp ends on $Σ$. As a conse quence, the Teichmüller space of hyperbolic metrics with geodesic boundary and cusp ends on $Σ$ is reconstructed from an intrinsic $(\bold QP^1, PSL(2, \bold Z))$ structure on $\Cal S(Σ)$.
Let $X_0$ be a complete borderless infinite area hyperbolic surface. We introduce Thurston's boundary to the Teichmüller space $T(X_0)$ of the surface $X_0$ using Liouville (geodesic) currents. Thurston's boundary to $T(X_0)$ is identified with the space $PML_{bdd}(X_0)$ of projective bounded measured laminations on $X_0$ which naturally extends Thurston's result for closed surfaces. Moreover, the quasiconformal mapping class group $MCG_{qc}(X_0)$ acts continuously on the closure $T(X_0)\cup PML_{bdd}(X_0)$.
We study the geometry of the Thurston metric on Teichmuller space by examining its geodesics and comparing them to Teichmuller geodesics. We show that, similar to a Teichmuller geodesic, the shadow of a Thurston geodesic to the curve graph is a reparametrized quasi-geodesic. However, we show that the set of short curves along the two geodesics are not identical.
Considering the Teichmüller space of a surface equipped with Thurston's Lipschitz metric, we study geodesic segments whose endpoints have bounded combinatorics. We show that these geodesics are cobounded, and that the closest-point projection to these geodesics is strongly contracting. Consequently, these geodesics are stable. Our main tool is to show that one can get a good estimate for the Lipschitz distance by considering the length ratio of finitely many curves.
Thurston's boundary to the universal Teichmüller space $T(\mathbb{H})$ is the set of asymptotic rays to the embedding of $T(\mathbb{H})$ in the space of geodesic currents; the boundary is identified with the projective bounded measured laminations $PML_{bdd}(\mathbb{H})$ of $\mathbb{H}$. We prove that each Teichmüller geodesic ray in $T(\mathbb{H})$ has a unique limit point in Thurston's boundary to $T(\mathbb{H})$ unlike in the case of closed surfaces.
The Teichmüller space $\mathcal{T}(Σ)$ of a surface $Σ$ is equipped with Thurston's asymmetric metric. Stretch lines are oriented geodesics for this metric on $\mathcal{T}(Σ)$. We give the asymptotic behavior of the lengths of the measured geodesic laminations as one follows a stretch line in the positive direction.
The set of directions from a quadratic differential that diverge on average under Teichmuller geodesic flow has Hausdorff dimension exactly equal to one-half.
For two measured laminations $ν^+$ and $ν^-$ that fill up a hyperbolizable surface $S$ and for $t \in (-\infty, \infty)$, let $L_t$ be the unique hyperbolic surface that minimizes the length function $e^t l(ν^+) + e^{-t} l(ν^-)$ on Teichmuller space. We characterize the curves that are short in $L_t$ and estimate their lengths. We find that the short curves coincide with the curves that are short in the surface $G_t$ on the Teichmuller geodesic whose horizontal and vertical foliations are respectively, $e^t ν^+$ and $e^{-t} ν^-$. By deriving additional information about the twists of $ν^+$ and…
Thurston's boundary to the universal Teichmüller space $T(\mathbb{D})$ is the space $PML_{bdd}(\mathbb{D})$ of projective bounded measured laminations of $\mathbb{D}$. A geodesic ray in $T(\mathbb{D})$ is of Teichmüller type if it shrinks vertical foliation of an integrable holomorphic quadratic differential. In a prior work we established that each Teichmüller geodesic ray limits to a multiple (by the reciprocal of the length of the leaves) of vertical foliation of the quadratic differential. Certain non-integrable holomorphic quadratic differential induce geodesic rays and we consider their …
Let $X$ be an infinite geodesically complete hyperbolic surface which can be decomposed into geodesic pairs of pants. We introduce Thurston's boundary to the Teichmüller space $T(X)$ of the surface $X$ using the length spectrum analogous to Thurston's construction for finite surfaces. Thurston's boundary using the length spectrum of $X$ is a "closure" of projective bounded measured laminations $PML_{bdd} (X)$, and it coincides with $PML_{bdd}(X)$ when $X$ can be decomposed into a countable union of geodesic pairs of pants whose boundary geodesics $\{α_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ have lengths pinched…
In this paper, we consider the asymptotic behavior of two Teichmüller geodesic rays determined by Jenkins-Strebel differentials, and we obtain a generalization of a theorem in \cite{Amano14}. We also consider the infimum of the asymptotic distance in shifting base points of the rays along the geodesics. We show that the infimum is represented by two quantities. One is the detour metric between the end points of the rays on the Gardiner-Masur boundary of the Teichmüller space, and the other is the Teichmüller distance between the end points of the rays on the augmented Teichmüller space.
Let $S$ be a closed, genus $g$ surface. The space of geodesic currents on $S$ encompasses the set of closed curves up to homotopy, as well as Teichmüller space, and many other spaces of structures on $S$. We show that one can define a mapping class group equivariant, length-minimizing projection from the set of filling geodesic currents down to Teichmüller space, and prove some basic properties of this projection to show that it is well-behaved.
We study the Asymptotic Cone of Teichmüller space equipped with the Weil-Petersson metric. In particular, we provide a characterization of the canonical finest pieces in the tree-graded structure of the asymptotic cone of Teichmüller space along the same lines as a similar characterization for right angled Artin groups by Behrstock-Charney and for mapping class groups by Behrstock-Kleiner-Minksy-Mosher. As a corollary of the characterization, we complete the thickness classification of Teichmüller spaces for all surfaces of finite type, thereby answering questions of Behrstock-Drutu, Behrstock…
We show that if Teichmüller geodesics spend enough time in the thick part of moduli space, they display CAT(-1)-type properties. In particular, they exponentially contract along strongly stable leaves. As an application we prove two closing lemmas.
We consider a geometric property of the closest-points projection to a geodesic in Teichmüller space: the projection is called contracting if arbitrarily large balls away from the geodesic project to sets of bounded diameter. (This property always holds in negatively curved spaces.) It is shown here to hold if and only if the geodesic is precompact, i.e. its image in the moduli space is contained in a compact set. Some applications are given, e.g. to stability properties of certain quasi-geodesics in Teichmüller space, and to estimates of translation distance for pseudo-Anosov maps.
We study how the length and the twisting parameter of a curve change along a Teichmuller geodesic. We then use our results to provide a formula for the Teichmuller distance between two hyperbolic metrics on a surface, in terms of the combinatorial complexity of curves of bounded lengths in these two metrics.
In this paper we study the convergence behavior of grafting rays to the Thurston boundary of Teichmuller space. When the grafting is done along a weighted system of simple closed curves or along a maximal uniquely ergodic lamination this behavior is the same as for Teichmuller geodesics and lines of minima. We also show that the ray grafted along a weighted system of simple closed curves is at bounded distance from Teichmuller geodesic.
We consider random walks on the mapping class group that have finite first moment with respect to the word metric, whose support generates a non-elementary subgroup and contains a pseudo-Anosov map whose invariant Teichmuller geodesic is in the principal stratum of quadratic differentials. We show that a Teichmuller geodesic typical with respect to the harmonic measure for such random walks, is recurrent to the thick part of the principal stratum. As a consequence, the vertical and horizontal foliations of such a random Teichmuller geodesic have no saddle connections.
We compute the sum of the positive Lyapunov exponents of the Hodge bundle with respect to the Teichmuller geodesic flow. The computation is based on the analytic Riemann-Roch Theorem and uses a comparison of determinants of flat and hyperbolic Laplacians when the underlying Riemann surface degenerates.
It was recently shown that the Carathéodory and Teichmüller metrics on the Teichmüller space of a closed surface do not coincide. On the other hand, Kra earlier showed that the metrics coincide when restricted to a Teichmüller disk generated by a differential with no odd-order zeros. Our aim is to classify Teichmüller disks on which the two metrics agree, and we conjecture that the Carathéodory and Teichmüller metrics agree on a Teichmüller disk if and only if the Teichmüller disk is generated by a differential with no odd-order zeros. Using dynamical results of Minsky, Smillie, and Weiss, we …
We show that, in the Teichmüller metric, "thin-framed triangles are thin"---that is, under suitable hypotheses, the variation of geodesics obeys a hyperbolic-like inequality. This theorem has applications to the study of random walks on Teichmüller space. In particular, an application is worked out for the action of the mapping class group: we show that geodesics track random walks sublinearly.
We prove that a certain series defines a constant function using Wolpert's formula for the variation of the length of a geodesic along a Fenchel Nielsen twist. Subsequently we determine the value viewing it as function on the the Deligne Mumford compactification and evaluating it at the stable curve at infinity.
A well-known theorem of Wolpert shows that the Weil-Petersson symplectic form on Teichmüller space, computed on two infinitesimal twists along simple closed geodesics on a fixed hyperbolic surface, equals the sum of the cosines of the intersection angles. We define an infinitesimal deformation starting from a more general object, namely a balanced geodesic graph, by which any tangent vector to Teichmüller space can be represented. We then prove a generalization of Wolpert's formula for these deformations. In the case of simple closed curves, we recover the theorem of Wolpert.
We study the Teichmüller metric on the Teichmüller space of a surface of finite type, in regions where the injectivity radius of the surface is small. The main result is that in such regions the Teichmüller metric is approximated up to bounded additive distortion by the sup metric on a product of lower dimensional spaces. The main technical tool in the proof is the use of estimates of extremal lengths of curves in a surface based on the geometry of their hyperbolic geodesic representatives.
Let $X_0$ be a complete hyperbolic surface of infinite type that has a geodesic pants decomposition with cuff lengths bounded above. The length spectrum Teichmüller space $T_{ls}(X_0)$ consists of homotopy classes of hyperbolic metrics on $X_0$ such that the ratios of the corresponding simple closed geodesic for the hyperbolic metric on $X_0$ and for the other hyperbolic metric are bounded from the below away from 0 and from the above away from $\infty$ (cf. \cite{ALPS}). This paper studies earthquakes in the length spectrum Teichmüller space $T_{ls}(X_0)$. We find a necessary condition and se…
We study two $2$-dimensional Teichmüller spaces of surfaces with boundary and marked points, namely, the pentagon and the punctured triangle. We show that their geometry is quite different from Teichmüller spaces of closed surfaces. Indeed, both spaces are exhausted by regular convex geodesic polygons with a fixed number of sides, and their geodesics diverge at most linearly.
We consider the limit set in Thurston's compactification PMF of Teichmueller space of some Teichmueller geodesics defined by quadratic differentials with minimal but not uniquely ergodic vertical foliations. We show that a) there are quadratic differentials so that the limit set of the geodesic is a unique point, b) there are quadratic differentials so that the limit set is a line segment, c) there are quadratic differentials so that the vertical foliation is ergodic and there is a line segment as limit set, and d) there are quadratic differentials so that the vertical foliation is ergodic and…
Extremal length is an important conformal invariant on Riemann surface. It is closely related to the geometry of Teichmuller metric on Teichmuller space. By identifying extremal length functions with energy of harmonic maps from Riemann surfaces to $\mathbb{R}$-trees, we study the second variation of extremal length functions along Weil-Petersson geodesics. We show that the extremal length of any measured foliation is a pluri-subharmonic function on Teichmuller space.
We show that the action of the mapping class group on the space of closed curves of a closed surface effectively tracks the corresponding action on Teichmüller space in the following sense: for all but quantitatively few mapping classes, the information of how a mapping class moves a given point of Teichmüller space determines, up to a power saving error term, how it changes the geometric intersection numbers of a given closed curve with respect to arbitrary geodesic currents. Applications include an effective estimate describing the speed of convergence of Teichmüller geodesic rays to the bou…
There are several Teichmüller spaces associated to a surface of infinite topological type, after the choice of a particular basepoint (a complex or a hyperbolic structure on the surface). These spaces include the quasiconformal Teichmüller space, the length spectrum Teichmüller space, the Fenchel-Nielsen Teichmüller space, and there are others. In general, these spaces are set-theoretically different. An important question is therefore to understand relations between these spaces. Each of these spaces is equipped with its own metric, and under some hypotheses, there are inclusions between thes…
For a compact surface $X_0$, Thurston introduced a compactification of its Teichmüller space $\mathcal T(X_0)$ by completing it with a boundary $\mathcal{PML}(X_0)$ consisting of projective measured geodesic laminations. We introduce a similar bordification for the Teichmüller space $\mathcal T(X_0)$ of a noncompact Riemann surface $X_0$, using the technical tool of geodesic currents. The lack of compactness requires the introduction of certain uniformity conditions which were unnecessary for compact surfaces. A technical step, providing a convergence result for earthquake paths in $\mathcal T…
An expansion is developed for the Weil-Petersson Riemann curvature tensor in the thin region of the Teichmüller and moduli spaces. The tensor is evaluated on the gradients of geodesic-lengths for disjoint geodesics. A precise lower bound for sectional curvature in terms of the surface systole is presented. The curvature tensor expansion is applied to establish continuity properties at the frontier strata of the augmented Teichmüller space. The curvature tensor has the asymptotic product structure already observed for the metric and covariant derivative. The product structure is combined with t…
Let $X_{0}$ be a complete hyperbolic surface of infinite type with geodesic boundary which admits a countable pair of pants decomposition. As an application of the Basmajian identity for complete bordered hyperbolic surfaces of infinite type with limit sets of 1-dimensional measure zero, we define an asymmetric metric (which is called arc metric) on the quasiconformal Teichmüller space $\mathcal{T}(X_{0})$ provided that $X_{0}$ satisfies a geometric condition. Furthermore, we construct several examples of hyperbolic surfaces of infinite type satisfying the geometric condition and discuss the r…
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…
In this paper we explore the idea that Teichmüller space is hyperbolic "on average." Our approach focuses on studying the geometry of geodesics which spend a definite proportion of time in some thick part of Teichmüller space. We consider several different measures on Teichmüller space and find that this behavior for geodesics is indeed typical. With respect to each of these measures, we show that the average distance between points in a ball of radius r is asymptotic to 2r, which is as large as possible. Our techniques also lead to a statement quantifying the expected thinness of random trian…
We prove that every Teichmuller geodesic of a finite type surface contains a string of intersecting long, thick and dominant segments, such that the distance between consecutive segments is bounded. This is key to obtaining some results about Teichmuller geodesics which mimic those for hyperbolic geodesics. These results have important applications to results about the geometry of hyperbolic three-manifolds.
Hamenstädt gave a parametrization of the Teichmüller space of punctured surfaces such that the image under this parametrization is the interior of a polytope. In this paper, we study the Hilbert metric on the Teichmüller space of punctured surfaces based on this parametrization. We prove that every earthquake ray is an almost geodesic under the Hilbert metric.
We show that any grafting ray in Teichmüller space determined by an arational lamination or a multi-curve is (strongly) asymptotic to a Teichmüller geodesic ray. As a consequence the projection of a generic grafting ray to moduli space is dense. We also show that the set of points in Teichmüller space obtained by integer (2π-) graftings on any hyperbolic surface projects to a dense set, which implies that complex projective surfaces with any fixed Fuchsian holonomy are dense in moduli space.
We study the asymptotic geometry of Teichmueller geodesic rays. We show that when the transverse measures to the vertical foliations of the quadratic differentials determining two different rays are topologically equivalent, but are not absolutely continuous with respect to each other, then the rays diverge in Teichmueller space.
We prove by an algebraic method that the embedding of the Teichmuller space in the space of geodesic currents is totally linearly independent. We prove a similar result for all negatively curved surfaces using an ergodic argument.
For a non-uniform lattice in SL(2,R), we consider excursions in cusp neighborhoods of a random geodesic on the corresponding finite area hyperbolic surface or orbifold. We prove a strong law for a certain partial sum involving these excursions. This generalizes a theorem of Diamond and Vaaler for continued fractions. In the Teichmuller setting, we consider invariant measures for the SL(2,R) action on the moduli spaces of quadratic differentials. By the work of Eskin and Mirzakhani, these measures are supported on affine invariant submanifolds of a stratum of quadratic differentials. For a Teic…
