Quasiconformal homeomorphisms and the convex hull boundary (Q1890201)

Let \(\Omega\) be an open simply-connected subset of the Riemann sphere \(S^2\) (regarded as the boundary of hyperbolic 3-space \({\mathbf H}^3\)) and let \(X=S^2\setminus \Omega\). (To avoid special cases, we suppose that \(\Omega\subset {\mathbf C}\) and \(\Omega\not= {\mathbf C}\).) We can form the hyperbolic convex hull \({\mathcal CH}(X)\), and the authors denote the relative boundary of \({\mathcal CH}(X)\) in \({\mathbf H}^3\) by \(\text{Dome}(\Omega)\). The study of the geometry of objects such as \(\text{Dome}(\Omega)\) was initiated by Thurston who proved for instance that the hyperboloic metric of \({\mathbf H}^3\) induces a path metric on \(\text{Dome}(\Omega)\) which makes it isometric to the hyperbolic disk \({\mathbf D}^2\). For such an \(\Omega\), Thurston defined a ``nearest point retraction'' \(r:\Omega\to \text{Dome}(\Omega)\) as follows: for each \(z\in\Omega\), we expand a small horoball at \(z\) and we call \(r(z)\in\text{Dome}(\Omega)\) the unique first point of contact. Sullivan, and Epstein-Marden analysed that construction and they proved that there exists \(K\) such that for any simply connected \(\Omega\not= {\mathbf C}\), there is a \(K\)-quasiconformal homeomorphism \(\Psi: \text{Dome}(\Omega)\to\Omega\) which extends continuously to the identity map on the common boundary \(\partial\Omega\). Thurston suggested that the best constant \(K\) is 2, and this suggestion has been called later on ``Thurston's \(K=2\) conjecture''. In this paper, the authors give a counterexample to that conjecture in its equivariant form, that is, in the case where the homeomorphism respects a group of Möbius transformations which preserve \(\Omega\). Another result that the authors prove in this paper is that the nearest point retraction \(r\) is 2-Lipschitz in the respective hyperbolic metrics, and that the constant 2 here is best possible. The authors also study pleating maps of hyperbolic 2-plane. They obtain explicit universal constants \(0<c_1<c_2\) such that no pleating map which bends more than \(c_1\) in some interval of unit length is an embedding, and such that any pleating map which bends less than \(c_2\) in each interval of unit length is embedded. They show that every \(K\)-quasiconformal homeomrophism of the unit disk \({\mathbf D}^2\) is a \((K,a(K))\)-quasi-isometry, where \(a(K)\) is an explicitely computed function, where the multiplicative constant is best possible and where the additive constant \(a(K)\) is best possible for some values of \(K\).