Minimal stretch maps between hyperbolic surfaces

There are several Teichm\"uller 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 Teichm\"uller space, the length spectrum Teichm\"uller space, the Fenchel-Nielsen Teichm\"uller space, and there are others. In general, these spaces are set-theoretically different. An important question is therefore to understand relations between ...

The length of the shortest closed geodesic in a hyperbolic surface $X$ is called the systole of $X.$ When $X$ is an $n$-times punctured sphere $\hat{ \mathbb{C}} \setminus A$ where $A \subset \hat{\mathbb{C}}$ is a finite set of cardinality $n\ge4,$ we define a quantity $Q(A)$ in terms of cross ratios of quadruples in $A$ so that $Q(A)$ is quantitatively comparable with the systole of $X.$ We next propose a method to construct a distance function $d_X$ on a punctured sphere $...

We develop a natural and geometric way to realize the hyperbolic plane as the moduli space of marked genus 1 Riemann surfaces. To do so, a metric is defined on the Teichm\"uller space of the torus, inspired by Thurston's Lipschitz metric for the case of hyperbolic surfaces. Based on extremal Lipschitz maps, the Teichm\"uller space of the torus with this new metric is shown to be isometric to the hyperbolic plane under the usual identification. This also gives a new way to rec...

For two measured laminations $\nu^+$ and $\nu^-$ 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 $e^t l(\nu^+) + e^{-t} l(\nu^-)$ 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 ve...

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 Teichm\"uller 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}). T...

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 spac...

A measured laminations on the universal hyperbolic solenoid $\S$ is, by our definition, a leafwise measured lamination with appropriate continuity for the transverse variations. An earthquakes on theuniversal hyperbolic solenoid $\S$ is uniquely determined by a measured lamination on $\S$; it is a leafwise earthquake with the leafwise earthquake measure equal to the leafwise measured lamination. Leafwise earthquakes fit together to produce a new hyperbolic metric on $\S$ whic...

About a decade ago Thurston proved that a vast collection of 3-manifolds carry metrics of constant negative curvature. These manifolds are thus elements of {\em hyperbolic geometry}, as natural as Euclid's regular polyhedra. For a closed manifold, Mostow rigidity assures that a hyperbolic structure is unique when it exists, so topology and geometry mesh harmoniously in dimension 3. This remarkable theorem applies to all 3-manifolds, which can be built up in an inductive way...

While there may be many Thurston metric geodesics between a pair of points in Teichm\"uller space, we find that by imposing an additional energy minimization constraint on the geodesics, thought of as limits of harmonic map rays, we select a unique Thurston geodesic through those points. Extending the target surface to the Thurston boundary yields, for each point $Y$ in Teichm\"uller space, an "exponential map" of rays from that point $Y$ onto Teichm\"uller space with visual ...

We describe local similarities and global differences between minimal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space and constant mean curvature 1 surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space. We also describe how to solve global period problems for constant mean curvature 1 surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space, and we give an overview of recent results on these surfaces. We include computer graphics of a number of examples.