Let $\mathcal T$ be the Teichmüller space of marked genus $g$, $n$ punctured Riemann surfaces with its bordification $\Tbar$ the {\em augmented Teichmüller space} of marked Riemann surfaces with nodes, \cite{Abdegn, Bersdeg}. Provided with the WP metric $\Tbar$ is a complete CAT(0) metric space, \cite{DW2, Wlcomp, Yam2}. An invariant of a marked hyperbolic structure is the length $\ell_α$ of the geodesic $α$ in a free homotopy class. A basic feature of Teichmüller theory is the interplay of two-dimensional hyperbolic geometry, Weil-Petersson (WP) geometry and the behavior of geodesic-length functions. Our goal is to develop the understanding of the intrinsic local WP geometry through a study of the gradient and Hessian of geodesic-length functions. Considerations include expansions for the WP pairing of gradients, expansions for the Hessian and covariant derivative, comparability models for the WP metric, as well as the behavior of WP geodesics including a description of the Alexandrov tangent cone at the augmentation. Approximations and applications for geodesics close to the augmentation are developed. An application for fixed points of group actions is described. Bounding configurations and functions on the hyperbolic plane is basic to our approach. Considerations include analyzing the orbit of a discrete group of isometries and bounding sums of the inverse square exponential-distance.
Let $X$ be a closed hyperbolic surface and $λ, η$ be weighted geodesic multicurves which are short on X. We show that the iterated grafting along $λ$ and $η$ is close in the Teichmueller metric to grafting along a single multicurve which can be given explicitly in terms of $λ$ and $η$. Using this result, we study the holonomy lifts $gr_λρ_{X,λ}$ of Teichmueller geodesics $ρ_{X,λ}$ for integral laminations $λ$ and show that all of them have bounded Teichmueller distance to the geodesic $ρ_{X,λ}$. We obtain analogous results for grafting rays. Finally we consider the asymptotic behaviour of iter…
We consider the group of sense-preserving diffeomorphisms $\Diff S^1$ of the unit circle and its central extension, the Virasoro-Bott group, with their respective horizontal distributions chosen to be Ehresmann connections with respect to a projection to the smooth universal Teichmüller space and the universal Teichmüller curve associated to the space of normalized univalent functions. We find formulas for the normal geodesics with respect to the pullback of the invariant Kählerian metrics, namely, the Velling-Kirillov metric on the class of normalized univalent functions and the Weil-Petersso…
We compare some natural triangulations of the Teichmüller space of hyperbolic surfaces with geodesic boundary and of some bordifications. We adapt Scannell-Wolf's proof to show that grafting semi-infinite cylinders at the ends of hyperbolic surfaces with fixed boundary lengths is a homeomorphism. This way, we construct a family of triangulations of the Teichmüller space of punctures surfaces that interpolates between Penner-Bowditch-Epstein's (using the spine construction) and Harer-Mumford-Thurston's (using Strebel's differentials). Finally, we show (adapting arguments of Dumas) that on a fix…
A summary introduction of the Weil-Petersson metric space geometry is presented. Teichmueller space and its augmentation are described in terms of Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates. Formulas for the gradients and Hessians of geodesic-length functions are presented. Applications are considered. A description of the Weil-Petersson metric in Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates is presented. The Alexandrov tangent cone at points of the augmentation is described. A comparison dictionary is presented between the geometry of the space of flat tori and Teichmueller space with the Weil-Petersson metric.
In this paper two Poisson structures on the moduli space of hyperbolic surfaces with conical points are compared: the Weil-Petersson one and the ηcoming from the representation variety. We show that they are multiple of each other, if the angles do not exceed 2π. Moreover, we exhibit an explicit formula for ηin terms of hyperbolic lengths of a suitable system of arcs.
Given a compact orientable surface of negative Euler characteristic, there exists a natural pairing between the Teichmueuller space of the surface and the set of homotopy classes of simple loops and arcs. The length pairing sends a hyperbolic metric and a homotopy class of a simple loop or arc to the length of geodesic in its homotopy class. We study this pairing function using the Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates on Teichmueller space and the Dehn-Thurston coordinates on the space of homotopy classes of curve systems. Our main result establishes Lipschitz type estimates for the length pairing expr…
Short geodesics are important in the study of the geometry and the spectra of Riemann surfaces. Bers' theorem gives a global bound on the length of the first $3g-3$ geodesics. We use the construction of Brooks and Makover of random Riemann surfaces to investigate the distribution of short ($< \log (g)$) geodesics on a random Riemann surfaces. We calculate the expected value of the shortest geodesic, and show that if one orders prime non-intersecting geodesics by length $γ_1\le γ_2\le ... \le γ_i ,...$, then for fixed $k$, if one allows the genus to go to infinity, the length of $γ_{k}$ is inde…
We extend Teichmueller dynamics to a flow on the total space of a flat bundle of deformation spaces of representations of the fundamental group of a fixed surface S in a Lie group G. The resulting dynamical system is a continuous version of the action of the mapping class group of S on the deformation space. We observe how ergodic properties of this action relate to this flow. When G is compact, this flow is strongly mixing over each component of the derormation space and of each stratum of the Teichmueller unit sphere bundle over the Riemann moduli space. We prove ergodicity for the analogous…
Let x and y be two (not necessarily distinct) points on a closed Riemannian manifold M of dimension n. According to a celebrated theorem by J.P. Serre there exist infinitely many geodesics between x and y. The length of the shortest of these geodesics is obviously less than the diameter of M. But what can be said about the length of the other geodesics? We conjecture that for every k there are k geodesics between x and y of length not exceeding kd, where d denotes the diameter of M.This conjecture is obviously true for round spheres and it is not difficult to prove it for all closed Riemannian…
In this work we study the issue of geodesic extendibility on complete and locally compact metric length spaces. We focus on the geometric structure of the space $(Σ(X),d_H)$ of compact balls endowed with the Hausdorff distance and give an explicit isometry between $(Σ(X),d_H)$ and the closed half-space $ X\times \mathbb{R}_{\ge 0}$ endowed with a taxicab metric. Among the applications we establish a group isometry between $\mbox{Iso} (X,d)$ and $\mbox{Iso} (Σ(X),d_H)$ when $(X,d)$ is a Hadamard space.
New results on the convexity of geodesic-length functions on Teichmüller space are presented. A formula for the Hessian of geodesic-length is presented. New bounds for the gradient and Hessian of geodesic-length are described. A relationship of geodesic-length functions to Weil-Petersson distance is described. Applications to the behavior of Weil-Petersson geodesics are discussed.
We introduce coordinates for a principal bundle $S\tilde T(F)$ over the super Teichmueller space $ST(F)$ of a surface $F$ with $s\geq 1$ punctures that extend the lambda length coordinates on the decorated bundle $\tilde T(F)=T(F)\times {\mathbb R}_+^s$ over the usual Teichmueller space $T(F)$. In effect, the action of a Fuchsian subgroup of $PSL(2,{\mathbb R})$ on Minkowski space ${\mathbb R}^{2,1}$ is replaced by the action of a super Fuchsian subgroup of $OSp(1|2)$ on the super Minkowski space ${\mathbb R}^{2,1|2}$, where $OSp(1|2)$ denotes the orthosymplectic Lie supergroup, and the lambda…
Length spectral rigidity is the question of under what circumstances the geometry of a surface can be determined, up to isotopy, by knowing only the lengths of its closed geodesics. It is known that this can be done for negatively curved Riemannian surfaces, as well as for negatively-curved cone surfaces. Steps are taken toward showing that this holds also for flat cone surfaces, and it is shown that the lengths of closed geodesics are also enough to determine which of these three categories a geometric surface falls into. Techniques of Gromov, Bonahon, and Otal are explained and adapted, such…
We give a metric characterization of the Euclidean sphere in terms of the lower bound of the sectional curvature and the length of the shortest closed geodesics.
We give a metric characterization of the Euclidean sphere in terms of the lower bound of the sectional curvature and the length of the shortest closed geodesics.
We obtained a complete classification of simple closed geodesics on regular tetrahedra in Lobachevsky space. Also, we evaluated the number of simple closed geodesics of length not greater than $L$ and found the asymptotic of this number as $L$ goes to infinity.
We construct a counterexample to a conjectured inequality L<2D, relating the diameter D and the least length L of a nontrivial closed geodesic, for a Riemannian metric on the 2-sphere. The construction relies on Guillemin's theorem concerning the existence of Zoll surfaces integrating an arbitrary infinitesimal odd deformation of the round metric. Thus the round metric is not optimal for the ratio L/D.
We show that the shortest closed geodesic on a 2-sphere with non-negative curvature has length bounded above by three times the diameter. We prove a new isoperimetric inequality for 2-spheres with pinched curvature; this allows us to improve our bound on the length of the shortest closed geodesic in the pinched curvature setting.
We prove an "Earthquake Theorem" for hyperbolic metrics with geodesic boundary on a compact surfaces $S$ with boundary: given two hyperbolic metrics with geodesic boundary on a surface with $k$ boundary components, there are $2^k$ right earthquakes transforming the first in the second. An alternative formulation arises by introducing the enhanced Teichmueller space of S: We prove that any two points of the latter are related by a unique right earthquake. The proof rests on the geometry of ``multi-black holes'', which are 3-dimensional anti-de Sitter manifolds, topologically the product of a su…
We give a lower bound for the length of a non-trivial geodesic loop on a simply-connected and compact manifold of even dimension with a non-reversible Finsler metric of positive flag curvature. Harris and Paternain use this estimate in their recent paper [HP] to give a geometric characterization of dynamically convex Finsler metrics on the 2-sphere.
We will develop simple relations between the arc-lengths of a pair of geodesics that share common end-points. The two geodesics differ only by the requirement that one is constrained to lie in a subspace of the parent manifold. We will present two applications of our results. In the first example we explore the convergence of Gaussian curvature estimates on a simple triangular mesh. The second example demonstrates an improved error estimate for the area of a Schwarz lantern.
Let $M$ be a Riemannian $2$-sphere. A classical theorem of Lyusternik and Shnirelman asserts the existence of three distinct simple non-trivial periodic geodesics on $M$. In this paper we prove that there exist three simple periodic geodesics with lengths that do not exceed $20d$, where $d$ is the diameter of $M$. We also present an upper bound that depends only on the area and diameter for the lengths of the three simple periodic geodesics with positive indices that appear as minimax critical values in the classical proofs of the Lyusternik-Shnirelman theorem. Finally, we present better bound…
In this paper we study 1/k geodesics, those closed geodesics that minimize on all subintervals of length $L/k$, where $L$ is the length of the geodesic. We develop new techniques to study the minimizing properties of these curves on doubled polygons, and demonstrate a sequence of doubled polygons whose closed geodesics exhibit unbounded minimizing properties. We also compute the length of the shortest closed geodesic on doubled odd-gons and show that this length approaches 4 times the diameter.
Let $M^n$ be a closed Riemannian manifold of dimension $n\geq 2$, with Ricci curvature $Ric \geq n-1$. We will show that any sphere of dimension $m$ in the space of closed loops on $M^n$ is homotopic to the sphere in the space of closed loops of length at most $8 πm$. It follows that the length of a shortest periodic geodesic on $M^n$ is bounded from above by $8 π(n-1)$.
Recently, F. Balacheff proved that the Calabi-Croke sphere made of two flat 1-unit-side equilateral triangles glued along their boundaries is a local extremum for the length of the shortest closed geodesic among the Riemannian spheres with conical singularities of fixed area. We give an alternative proof of this theorem, which does not make use of the uniformization theorem, and extend the result to Finsler metrics.
On a hyperbolic Riemann surface, given two simple closed geodesics that intersect $n$ times, we address the question of a sharp lower bound $L_n$ on the length attained by the longest of the two geodesics. We show the existence of a surface $S_n$ on which there exists two simple closed geodesics of length $L_n$ intersecting $n$ times and explicitly find $L_n$ for $n\leq 3$.
In this paper, we show that for any closed 4-dimensional simply-connected Riemannian manifold $M$ with Ricci curvature $|Ric|\leq 3$, volume $vol(M)>v>0$, and diameter $diam(M)<D$, the length of a shortest closed geodesic is bounded by a function $F(v,D)$ which only depends on $v$ and $D$. The proofs of our result are based on a recent theorem of diffeomorphism finiteness of the manifolds satisfying the above conditions proven by J. Cheeger and A. Naber.
We give an identity involving sums of functions of lengths of simple closed geodesics, known as a McShane identity, on any non-orientable hyperbolic surface with boundary which generalises Mirzakhani's identities on orientable hyperbolic surfaces with boundary.
The goal of this paper is to clarify connections between Killing fields of constant length on a Rimannian geodesic orbit manifold $(M,g)$ and the structure of its full isometry group. The Lie algebra of the full isometry group of $(M,g)$ is identified with the Lie algebra of Killing fields $\mathfrak{g}$ on $(M,g)$. We prove the following result: If $\mathfrak{a}$ is an abelian ideal of $\mathfrak{g}$, then every Killing field $X\in \mathfrak{a}$ has constant length. On the ground of this assertion we give a new proof of one result of C. Gordon: Every Riemannian geodesic orbit manifold of nonp…
We establish sharp universal upper bounds on the length of the shortest closed geodesic on a punctured sphere with three or four ends endowed with a complete Riemannian metric of finite area. These sharp curvature-free upper bounds are expressed in terms of the area of the punctured sphere. In both cases, we describe the extremal metrics, which are modeled on the Calabi-Croke sphere or the tetrahedral sphere. We also extend these optimal inequalities for reversible and non-necessarily reversible Finsler metrics. In this setting, we obtain optimal bounds for spheres with a larger number of punc…
In this paper we prove new upper bounds for the length of a shortest closed geodesic, denoted $l(M)$, on a complete, non-compact Riemannian surface $M$ of finite area $A$. We will show that $l(M) \leq 4\sqrt{2A}$ on a manifold with one end, thus improving the prior estimate of C. B. Croke, who first established that $l(M) \leq 31 \sqrt{A}$. Additionally, for a surface with at least two ends we show that $l(M) \leq 2\sqrt{2A}$, improving the prior estimate of Croke that $l(M) \leq (12+3\sqrt{2})\sqrt{A}$.
In this paper we study 1/k-geodesics, those closed geodesics that minimize on any subinterval of length $L/k$, where $L$ is the length of the geodesic. We investigate the existence and behavior of these curves on doubled polygons and show that every doubled regular $n$-gon admits a $1/2n$-geodesic. For the doubled regular $p$-gons, with $p$ an odd prime, we conjecture that $k=2p$ is the minimum value for $k$ such that the space admits a $1/k$-geodesic.
We introduce the notion of weak commensurabilty of arithmetic subgroups and relate it to the length equivalence and isospectrality of locally symmetric spaces. We prove many strong consequences of weak commensurabilty and derive from these many interesting results about isolength and isospectral locally symmetric spaces.
The lengths of geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces satisfy intriguing equations, known as identities, relating these lengths to geometric quantities of the surface. This paper is about a large family of identities that relate lengths of closed geodesics and orthogeodesics to boundary lengths or number of cusps. These include, as particular cases, identities due to Basmajian, to McShane and to Mirzakhani and Tan-Wong-Zhang. In stark contrast to previous identities, the identities presented here include the lengths taken among all closed geodesics.
This paper proves that in any closed Riemannian surface $M$ with diameter $d$, the length of the $k^\text{th}$-shortest geodesic between two given points $p$ and $q$ is at most $8kd$. This bound can be tightened further to $6kd$ if $p = q$. This improves prior estimates by A. Nabutovsky and R. Rotman.
We determine the lengths of all closed sub-Riemannian geodesics on the three-sphere. Our methods are elementary and allow us to avoid using explicit formulas for the sub-Riemannian geodesics.
We first describe the action of the fundamental group of a closed surface of variable negative curvature on the oriented geodesics in its universal covering in terms of a naturally-defined flat connection whose holonomy lies in the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of S^1 x R. Consideration of the holonomy necessitates an extension from Riemannian to Finsler metrics. The second part of the paper follows the Higgs bundle approach to flat connections adapted to this infinite dimensional group and focuses on a family of metrics, relying on a construction of O.Biquard, which is parametrized by …
The results of this paper have been greatly superseded by those in the paper "Contact geometry and isosystolic inequalities" (arXiv:1109.4253) by the same authors.
In this article, we investigate when the set of primitive geodesic lengths on a Riemannian manifold have arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. We prove that in the space of negatively curved metrics, a metric having such arithmetic progressions is quite rare. We introduce almost arithmetic progressions, a coarsification of arithmetic progressions, and prove that every negatively curved, closed Riemannian manifold has arbitrarily long almost arithmetic progressions in its primitive length spectrum. Concerning genuine arithmetic progressions, we prove that every non-compact, locally symmetri…
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 H be a discrete cocompact subgroup of SL_2(C). We conjecture that the quotient manifold X=SL_2(C)/H contains infinitely many non-isogeneous elliptic curves and prove that this is indeed the case if Schanuel's conjecture holds. We also prove it in the special case where the intersection of H and SL_2(R) is cocompact in SL_2(R). Furthermore, we deduce some consequences for the geodesic length spectra of real hyperbolic 2- and 3-folds.
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.
We prove prime geodesic theorems counting primitive closed geodesics on a compact hyperbolic 3-manifold with length and holonomy in prescribed intervals, which are allowed to shrink. Our results imply effective equidistribution of holonomy and have both the rate of shrinking and the strength of the error term fully symmetric in length and holonomy.
Metrics on Lie groupoids and differentiable stacks have been introduced recently, extending the Riemannian geometry of manifolds and orbifolds to more general singular spaces. Here we continue that theory, studying stacky curves on Riemannian stacks, measuring their length using stacky metrics, and introducing stacky geodesics. Our main results show that the length of stacky curves measure distances on the orbit space, characterize stacky geodesics as locally minimizing curves, and establish a stacky version of Hopf-Rinow Theorem. We include a concise overview that bypasses nonessential techni…
It is not known whether or not the lenth of the shortest periodic geodesic on a closed Riemannian manifold $M^n$ can be majorized by $c(n) vol^{ 1 \over n}$, or $\tilde{c}(n)d$, where $n$ is the dimension of $M^n$, $vol$ denotes the volume of $M^n$, and $d$ denotes its diameter. In this paper we will prove that for each $ε>0$ one can find such estimates for the length of a geodesic loop with with angle between $π-ε$ and $π$ with an explicit constant that depends both on $n$ and $ε$. That is, let $ε> 0$, and let $a = \lceil{ {1 \over {\sin ({ε\over 2})}}} \rceil+1 $. We will prove that there ex…
Based on earlier work of the latter two named authors on the higher super-Teichmueller space with $\mathcal{N}=1$, a component of the flat $OSp(1|2)$ connections on a punctured surface, here we extend to the case $\mathcal{N}=2$ of flat $OSp(2|2)$ connections. Indeed, we construct here coordinates on the higher super-Teichmueller space of a surface $F$ with at least one puncture associated to the supergroup $OSp(2|2)$, which in particular specializes to give another treatment for $\mathcal{N}=1$ simpler than the earlier work. The Minkowski space in the current case, where the corresponding sup…
We study the length, weak length and complex length spectrum of closed geodesics of a compact flat Riemannian manifold, comparing length-isospectrality with isospectrality of the Laplacian acting on p-forms. Using integral roots of the Krawtchouk polynomials, we give many pairs of p-isospectral flat manifolds having different lengths of closed geodesics and in some cases, different injectivity radius and different first eigenvalue. We prove a Poisson summation formula relating the p-eigenvalue spectrum with the lengths of closed geodesics. As a consequence we show that the spectrum determines …
On a surface with a Finsler metric, we investigate the asymptotic growth of the number of closed geodesics of length less than $L$ which minimize length among all geodesic multicurves in the same homology class. An important class of surfaces which are of interest to us are hyperbolic surfaces.
We prove a strong multiplicity one theorem for the length spectrum of compact even dimensional hyperbolic spaces i.e. if all but finitely many closed geodesics for two compact even dimensional hyperbolic spaces have the same length, then all closed geodesics have the same length.
If $(M,g)$ is a compact Riemannian surface then the integrals of $L^2(M)$-normalized eigenfunctions $e_j$ over geodesic segments of fixed length are uniformly bounded. Also, if $(M,g)$ has negative curvature and $γ(t)$ is a geodesic parameterized by arc length, the measures $e_j(γ(t))\, dt$ on $\R$ tend to zero in the sense of distributions as the eigenvalue $\la_j\to \infty$, and so integrals of eigenfunctions over periodic geodesics tend to zero as $\la_j\to \infty$. The assumption of negative curvature is necessary for the latter result.
