On the deformation theory of classical Schottky groups (Q1072207)

In connection with the deformation theory of classical Schottky groups, the author has been led to investigating configurations of finite numbers of circles (and straight lines) in the plane which are externally tangent and such that the complementary regions consist of curvilinear triangles and rectangles. He parametrises each space \({\mathcal S}\) of all such configurations which have the same combinatorial structure showing that \({\mathcal S}\) is homeomorphic to \({\mathbb{R}}^ R\) if the complementary region has R rectangles. Each rectangle can be ''filled'' by a sequence of circles so that at each stage the complementary region consists of two triangles and a rectangle or four triangles. The steps involved in this filling give a continued fraction which the author ingeniously uses as a parameter for the rectangle. As a consequence, those configurations which can be filled so that the complement consists of triangles (these are conformally rigid) correspond to finite continued fractions and so are dense in \({\mathcal S}\). The proofs make extensive use of quasi-conformal deformations.