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A Wolpert Theorem for shearing coordinates

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Abstract

A theorem from Wolpert bounds the Weil–Petersson distance from a hyperbolic surface to a maximally noded surface in terms of the lengths of the underlying pants decomposition. We prove analogues for punctured surfaces both in terms of the lambda-lengths and in terms of the shearing coordinates of an ideal triangulation.

Introduction

The Weil–Petersson (WP) metric is a negatively curved Kähler metric on the Teichmüller space Teich⁡g,n\operatorname{Teich}_{g,n} of a surface of genus gg with nn punctures [4, 25, 27]. It is not complete [26, 11], and its completion is the augmented Teichmüller space Teich⁡‾g,n\overline{\operatorname{Teich}}_{g,n}, obtained by adding strata of noded surfaces [7, 2 Mas76]. The Weil–Petersson distance between two points of Teichmüller space is difficult to compute. Nevertheless, Wolpert [29, 30] gave a simple upper bound for the distance from a point XX to the stratum S(Γ)S(\Gamma) obtained by pinching a multicurve Γ\Gamma:

dWP(X,S(Γ))≤2π∑γ∈ΓℓX(γ).d_{\mathrm{WP}}(X,S(\Gamma)) \le\sqrt{2\pi\sum_{\gamma\in\Gamma}\ell_X(\gamma)}.

When Γ\Gamma is a pants decomposition, the stratum S(Γ)S(\Gamma) is a single maximally noded surface, and the bound depends only on the Fenchel–Nielsen lengths with respect to Γ\Gamma. Combined with the existence of short pants decompositions [7, 22], it shows that every point of Teich⁡g,n\operatorname{Teich}_{g,n} lies at distance bounded in terms of gg and nn from a maximally noded surface. This result is used to study the coarse geometry of the WP metric, see for instance [9, 12]. In particular Cavendish and Parlier obtained an upper bound of order glog⁡g\sqrt{g}\log g for the WP diameter of moduli space with a fixed number of punctures [12], which was recently shown to be sharp by Wu [34].

Punctured surfaces admit another natural decomposition, into ideal triangles. Whereas a pair of pants is determined up to isometry by its three boundary lengths, all ideal triangles are isometric, so the geometry of the surface is entirely captured by the way the triangles are glued together. Their gluing is determined by the shearing coordinates se(X)s_e(X) associated to each arc ee of the triangulation [8, 14, 24]. Bestvina, Bromberg, Fujiwara and Souto showed that the length of every essential closed curve is a convex function of the shearing coordinates [6 Theorem 1.3]. We want an explicit bound for the WP distance between two surfaces in terms of their shearing coordinates.

We first establish a distance estimate in terms of truncated arc-lengths. After truncating the cusps along horocycles of length 1/41/4, each arc ee of an ideal triangulation TT of a hyperbolic surface XX has a finite truncated length δe(X)\delta_e(X), see § 2.5. We write

LT(X):=∑e∈Tδe(X)\mathcal{L}_T(X) := \sum_{e\in T} \delta_e(X)

for the sum of the truncated lengths of the arcs of TT on XX. Our main result is an analogue of Wolpert’s bound in which the lengths of the curves of a pants decomposition are replaced by the truncated lengths of the arcs of an ideal triangulation.

Theorem 3.10. Let g,ng,n be integers with n≥1n \ge1 and 2g−2+n>02g-2+n>0. There is a universal constant C<6C<6 such that any two hyperbolic surfaces Y,Z∈Teich⁡g,nY,Z\in\operatorname{Teich}_{g,n}, equipped with the same ideal triangulation TT, satisfy

dWP(Y,Z)≤Cn+LT(Y)+LT(Z).d_{\mathrm{WP}}(Y,Z) \le C\sqrt{n+\mathcal{L}_T(Y)+\mathcal{L}_T(Z)}.

More precisely, C=8+2πB<5.82C=\sqrt{8+2\pi B}<5.82, where B=22+log⁡(1+2)/log⁡2B=2\sqrt{2}+\log(1+\sqrt{2})/\log2. The constant does not depend on the topology of the surface nor on the geometry of YY and ZZ. A different approach to Theorem 3.10 can be based on the formula of Wolf for the Weil–Petersson Hessian of the truncated lengths of geodesic arcs joining cusps [32 Section 6.1 and Theorem 6.4].

Shears and truncated lengths are related through Penner’s hh-lengths [23]: the shear points of an arc lie on its truncated part, so that ∣se(X)∣≤δe(X)−2log⁡4|s_e(X)|\le\delta_e(X)-2\log4, and conversely the truncated lengths are controlled by the sums of shears along consecutive arcs around each cusp (Lemma 2.2). Let OT(X)\mathcal{O}_T(X) be the maximum absolute value of a sum of shearing coordinates along consecutive arcs ending in the same cusp (with arc endpoints counted with multiplicity). This is the oscillation norm of Kahn–Marković [16], see § 2.4. As a consequence of the main theorem we obtain the following upper bound

Corollary 3.11. Let g,ng,n be integers with n≥1n \ge1 and 2g−2+n>02g-2+n>0. Any two hyperbolic surfaces Y,Z∈Teich⁡g,nY,Z\in\operatorname{Teich}_{g,n}, equipped with the same ideal triangulation TT, satisfy

dWP(Y,Z)≤21(2g−2+n)(log⁡(24(2g−2+n))+OT(Y)+OT(Z)).d_{\mathrm{WP}}(Y,Z)\le21\sqrt{(2g-2+n)\left(\log(24(2g-2+n))+\mathcal{O}_T(Y)+\mathcal{O}_T(Z)\right)}.

Kahn–Marković [16 Theorem 2.1] obtained WP distance estimates in terms of oscillation norm and the proportion of edges whose shear exceeds a prescribed threshold, with a constant depending on an upper bound for the individual shears.

Since the sum of all shearing coordinates along arcs ending at the same cusp is zero, we have OT(X)≤∑e∈T∣se(X)∣\mathcal{O}_T(X)\le\sum_{e\in T}|s_e(X)|. Corollary 3.11 therefore yields

Corollary 3.12. Let g,ng,n be integers with n≥1n \ge1 and 2g−2+n>02g-2+n>0. Any two surfaces Y,Z∈Teich⁡g,nY,Z\in\operatorname{Teich}_{g,n}, equipped with the same ideal triangulation TT, satisfy

dWP(Y,Z)≤21(2g−2+n)(log⁡(24(2g−2+n))+∑e∈T(∣se(Y)∣+∣se(Z)∣)).d_{\mathrm{WP}}(Y,Z)\le21\sqrt{(2g-2+n)\left(\log(24(2g-2+n))+\sum_{e\in T}\left(|s_e(Y)|+|s_e(Z)|\right)\right)}.

Outline of the proof

Let YY and ZZ carry the same marked ideal triangulation T\mathcal{T}. Truncate the cusps of YY and ZZ along the horocycles of length 1/41/4 and glue the truncated surface to its mirror image, inserting at each cusp a Euclidean cylinder of height TT between the two corresponding horocycles. This gives two closed Riemann surfaces WT(Y)W_T(Y) and WT(Z)W_T(Z) of genus 2g+n−12g+n-1. Following an arc ee of T\mathcal{T} on the truncated surface, then its mirror image, and closing up with two vertical segments in the cylinders gives a closed curve d(e)d(e). The curves d(e)d(e), e∈Te\in\mathcal{T}, give a pants decomposition PT\mathcal{P}_T of WT(Y)W_T(Y) and WT(Z)W_T(Z).

As T→∞T\to\infty the core curves of the inserted cylinders are pinched. By using Wolpert’s plumbing coordinates [28], we show that WT(Y)W_T(Y), resp. WT(Z)W_T(Z), converges in the augmented Teichmüller space of the double to the noded surface D(Y)D(Y), resp. D(Z)D(Z), each obtained from the corresponding surface and its mirror image by pairing corresponding cusps into nodes. Denote by dWPauxd_{\mathrm{WP}}^{\mathrm{aux}} the WP distance on the augmented Teichmüller space of the closed double, of genus 2g+n−12g+n-1. The noded surfaces D(Y)D(Y) and D(Z)D(Z) lie in the stratum where exactly the core curves of the cylinders are pinched. This stratum is isometric to the product of the Teichmüller spaces of the two halves [Mas76, Wol03] so that

2 dWP(Y,Z)=dWPaux(D(Y),D(Z))≤dWPaux(D(Y),PT)+dWPaux(PT,D(Z)).\sqrt{2}\,d_{\mathrm{WP}}(Y,Z)=d_{\mathrm{WP}}^{\mathrm{aux}}(D(Y),D(Z))\leq d_{\mathrm{WP}}^{\mathrm{aux}}(D(Y),\mathcal{P}_T)+d_{\mathrm{WP}}^{\mathrm{aux}}(\mathcal{P}_T,D(Z)).

We bound each term by passing through the surface WT0(V)W_{T_0}(V) with T0=2πT_0=2\pi,

2 dWP(Y,Z)≤dWPaux(D(Y),WT0(Y))+dWPaux(WT0(Y),PT)+dWPaux(PT,WT0(Z))+dWPaux(WT0(Z),D(Z)).\begin{aligned} \sqrt{2}\,d_{\mathrm{WP}}(Y,Z)&\leq d_{\mathrm{WP}}^{\mathrm{aux}}(D(Y),W_{T_0}(Y))+d_{\mathrm{WP}}^{\mathrm{aux}}(W_{T_0}(Y),\mathcal{P}_T)\\ &\quad+d_{\mathrm{WP}}^{\mathrm{aux}}(\mathcal{P}_T,W_{T_0}(Z))+d_{\mathrm{WP}}^{\mathrm{aux}}(W_{T_0}(Z),D(Z)). \end{aligned}

The first term is the cost of opening the cylinders along a plumbing deformation (Lemma 3.2) while the second term is bounded by Wolpert’s estimate applied to the pants decomposition PT\mathcal{P}_T of WT0(Y)W_{T_0}(Y), respectively WT0(Z)W_{T_0}(Z) namely 2π∑e∈TℓWT0(V)(d(e))\sqrt{2\pi\sum_{e\in\mathcal{T}}\ell_{W_{T_0}(V)}(d(e))}. The length of each curve d(e)d(e) is controlled by the truncated length of ee (Lemma 3.3): ℓWT0(V)(d(e))≤22 δe(V)+4log⁡(1+2)\ell_{W_{T_0}(V)}(d(e))\leq2\sqrt{2}\,\delta_e(V)+4\log(1+\sqrt{2}).

The proof combines classical tools, for instance Wolpert used doubles and opened nodes to prove the strict WP convexity of the distance between horocycles of fixed lengths [31 Theorem 6.1]. He also studied shear deformations as limits of opposing twists on opened doubles [33 Sections 4–5]. Mondello gave a formula for the WP Poisson structure in arc-length coordinates on the Teichmüller space of compact hyperbolic surfaces with geodesic boundary by doubling the arcs of a triangulation to obtain a pants decomposition [19 Theorem 4.1].

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my supervisor Hugo Parlier for helpful discussions and for his encouragement.

Use of AI tools

The idea behind this work is to improve the bound on the diameter of the hexagon graph obtained in the first version of [1]. My role was that of an archaeologist who knows where to dig: from [1], I identified the precise step needed for this improvement and the part of the literature where it should be found, and I used AI tools as assistants to unearth the argument and to clean and polish it. More precisely, I asked GPT-6-Astra and GPT-6.1-Sol for possible approaches to this step. They suggested a nice strategy, relying on results of Wolpert [28, 29]. I then polished this strategy into the proofs presented here. During this process, I used Claude Opus 5.5 as an assistant to improve the writing, and to help check the clarity and consistency of notation, statements and proofs.

Set up

This section fixes notation and recalls the background material we use. Throughout, Σ\Sigma is an oriented surface of genus gg with nn punctures and Euler characteristic χ(Σ)=2−2g−n<0\chi(\Sigma)=2-2g-n<0.

Weil–Petersson distance

The Teichmüller space Teichg,n=Teich(Σ)\mathrm{Teich}_{g,n}=\mathrm{Teich}(\Sigma) is the space of isotopy classes of complete finite-area hyperbolic metrics on Σ\Sigma. Equivalently, it is the space of marked complete finite-area hyperbolic surfaces (X,f)(X,f), where f:Σ→Xf:\Sigma\to X is a homeomorphism, up to the equivalence (X,f)∼(Y,g)(X,f)\sim(Y,g) if and only if g∘f−1:X→Yg\circ f^{-1}:X\to Y is isotopic to an isometry.

References

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