Asymptoticity of grafting and Teichmüller rays. II (Q2349869)

Grafting rays and Teichmüller rays are one-parameter families of (marked) conformal structures on a surface, that is, they are paths in Teichmüller space, that arise in two different ways. Teichmüller rays are geodesics in the Teichmüller metric and determined by a measured lamination \(\lambda\) which is the direction of the geodesic. A grafting ray is determined by a measured lamination \(\lambda\) on a hyperbolic surface. It is obtained by cutting along \(\lambda\) on the surface and inserting a Euclidean metric whose width increases along the ray. In the preceding paper [Geom. Topol. 18, No. 4, 2127--2188 (2014; Zbl 1304.30060)], the author proved that any grafting ray in Teichmüller space determined by an arational lamination or a multicurve is (strongly) asymptotic to a Teichmüller geodesic ray. In this paper, the strong comparison between the two rays for any measured lamination is established. A key step in the proof is to consider an infinite-area singular flat surface comprising half-planes and half-infinite cylinders singular flat surfaces, that represents a limit of the singular-flat structures along a Teichmüller ray. Equivalently, this is a Riemann surface equipped with certain meromorphic quadratic differential with higher order poles. Given a grafting ray, its limiting surface is defined, and a conformally equivalent singular-flat surface of infinite area is defined, that represents the limit of the desired Teichmüller ray. The proof involves building quasiconformal maps of low dilatation between the surfaces along the rays.