Schottky spaces and universal Mumford curves over \(\mathbb{Z}\) (Q2674693)

A Schottky group is a free, finitely generated subgroup of \(\mathrm{PGL}_2(\mathbb{C})\). These groups uniformize the Riemann surfaces in the sense that every connected complex analytic curve is the quotient of an open dense subset \(\mathcal{O} \subset \mathbb{C}\) by the action of a Schottky group which has \(\mathcal{O}\) as the region of discontinuity. In the past '70s, D. Mumford started the study of non-archimedean theory of Schottky uniformization. He defined the concept of non-archimedean Schottky group and showed that these groups act on some open subset of the projective line, and the quotient identifies to a projective curve. Also, he characterized the curves that admit Schottky uniformization. V. Berkovich gave a further step in the '80s, defining non-archimedean analytic spaces as spaces of absolute values. If \(k\) is a non-archimedean field, the group \(\mathrm{PGL}_2(k)\) acts on the Berkovich projective line \(\mathbb{P}_k^{1,\mathrm{an}}\), and the Schottky uniformization of Mumford curves holds as in the complex case. In the article under review, the authors deal with both archimedean and non-archimedean theories of Schottky uniformization. In order to get a common way of study for both theories, they define a moduli space \(\mathcal{S}_g\) of Schottky groups of rank \(g\) as a Berkovich space over \(\mathbb{Z}\). That definition generalizes the Schottky spaces both over \(\mathbb{C}\) and over non-archimedean fields. The space \(\mathcal{S}_g\) is proved (Theorem 4.3.4) to be open in \(\mathbb{A}_{\mathbb{Z}}^{3g-3,\text{an}}\), an affine Berkovich space over \(\mathbb{Z}\). Then, the authors study the connection between \(\mathcal{S}_g\) and the moduli space of curves. If \(\text{Out}(F_g)\) is the group of outer automorphisms of the free group with \(g\) generators, and \(\mathcal{S}_g^{\mathrm{na}}\) is the set of non-archimedean points of \(\mathcal{S}_g\), the action of \(\text{Out}(F_g)\) on \(\mathcal{S}_g^{\mathrm{na}}\) is proper and has finite stabilizers (Corollary 5.3.7). The properness of the action holds also for the set \(\mathcal{S}_g^{\mathrm{a}}\) of archimedean points; but it is important to note that it is not proved yet for the whole space \(\mathcal{S}_g\). The next step is to define \(\mathcal{C}_g\), the universal Mumford curve over \(\mathbb{Z}\), and then to prove that there exists a proper morphism of analytic spaces over \(\mathbb{Z}\), \(\mathcal{C}_g \rightarrow \mathcal{S}_g\), such that for every \(x \in \mathcal{S}_g\), its preimage in \(\mathcal{C}_g\) is a curve uniformized by the Schottky group \(\Lambda _x\) (Corollary 6.1.3), and so the universal Mumford curve \(\mathcal{C}_g\) can be uniformized by an open subset of the relative projective line over \(\mathcal{S}_g\), \(\mathbb{P}_{\mathcal{S}_g}^1\). The article ends studying the relationship on the non-archimedean Schottky space with the context of the geometric group theory and the theory of moduli spaces of tropical curves (Theorem 6.2.2).