Rigidity of Teichmüller space (Q5916081)

Let $S$ be a connected surface of finite hyperbolic type. In their previous work [Duke Math. J. 166, No. 8, 1517--1572 (2017; Zbl 1373.32012)] the authors used the ideas of coarse differentiation to study the large-scale geometry of the Teichmüller space $\mathcal{T}\left( S \right)$ equipped with the Teichmüller metric ${{d}_{\mathcal{T}\left( S \right)}}$ analyzing quasi-Lipschitz maps from a large box $B\subset {{\mathbb{R}}^{n}}$ into $\mathcal{T}\left( S \right)$. In this article, the authors are continuing their study of the coarse geometry of $\mathcal{T}\left( S \right)$ and prove that for every quasi-isometry of $\mathcal{T}\left( S \right)$ equipped with ${{d}_{\mathcal{T}\left( S \right)}}$ there is an isometry of $\mathcal{T}\left( S \right)$ at a bounded distance. \par For $\xi \left( S \right):=3g\left( S \right)+\text{p}\left( S \right)-3$ the \textit{complexity} of $S$, where $g\left( S \right)$ is the genus of $S$ and $\text{p}\left( S \right)$ the number of punctures on $S$, the proof of the above main result is by induction on $\xi \left( S \right)$, removing from $S$ all components of complexity 1 and cutting along the shortest curves. In this strategy, the authors prove that a quasi-isometry preserves maximal cusps and in fact for any point in the maximal rank set the shortest curves are preserved. Near such a point of maximal rank, $\mathcal{T}\left( S \right)$ is indeed close to being isometric to a product of copies of the hyperbolic plane with the supremum metric.