Dimension of quasicircles (Q617884): Difference between revisions

In his paper on the area and Hausdorff dimension distortion of plane quasiconformal mappings [Acta Math. 173, No. 1, 37--60 (1994; Zbl 0815.30015)], \textit{K. Astala} made the conjecture that the Hausdorff dimension of a \(k\)-quasicircle cannot exceed \(1+k^2\). A \(k\)-quasicircle is the image of a circle under a quasiconformal map of the plane whose complex dilatation \(\mu\) satisfies \(|\mu| \leq k\) a.e. From his theory it follows that the Hausdorff dimension of a \(k\)-quasicircle is always \(\leq 1+ k\), but this does not take into account the special character of a quasicircle. In fact it was known, see [\textit{J. Becker} and \textit{Ch. Pommerenke}, Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn., Ser. A I, Math. 12, No. 2, 329--333 (1987; Zbl 0606.30023)], that for small values of \(k\), the Hausdorff dimension of a \(k\)-quasicircle is strictly less than \(1+k\). In this paper, the author proves the Astala conjecture. In the proof, the special character of a quasicircle is taken into account by representing quasicircles by antisymmetric Beltrami coefficients; in fact, for \(k\)-quasilines, a special representation theorem makes use of this antisymmetry. The proof of the Astala conjecture then relies on this and a symmetric Harnack inequality. Holomorphic motions and the thermodynamic formalism are also employed. It is not known if the upper bound \(1+k^2\) is sharp.