On angles in Teichmüller spaces (Q2249622)

The notion of angle can be generalized to an arbitrary metric space \((X,d)\). If \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\) are two continuous curves in \(X\) with common endpoint \(p\), then for any \(r>0\) choose \(x(r)\in \alpha\) and \(y(r) \in \beta\) so that the sub-curves from \(p\) to \(x(r)\) and \(y(r)\) respectively have length \(r\). Then the angle \(\theta\) between \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\) is defined to satisfy \[ 2\sin \frac{\theta}{2} = \lim_{r\to 0} \frac{ d(x(r).y(r))}{r} . \] if the limit exists. The article under review investigates this notion in the setting of infinite-dimensional Teichmüller spaces, considered as metric spaces when equipped with the Teichmüller metric. The authors show that such metric spaces are far from being analogous to Euclidean spaces by proving that in any infinite-dimensional Teichmüller space, there exist infinitely many geodesic triangles, each of which have the same three vertices and such that the three sides have the same arbitrary length, while the angles may take any value between \(0\) and \(\pi\). Further there exist infinitely many geodesic curves meeting at a point for which the angle is not defined. This result is proved through a direct construction, and the use of degenerating Hamilton sequences for extremal Beltrami coefficients.