Sur le bord de Thurston de l'espace de Teichmüller d'une surface non compacte. (On the Thurston boundary of the Teichmüller space of a non- compact surface) (Q1120153)

Let \({\mathcal M}\) be an orientable surface of finite type and of negative Euler characteristics. Following \textit{W. Thurston} [cf. ``Minimal stretch maps between hyperbolic surfaces'', Preprint (1985)] one can associate to every hyperbolic structure g on \({\mathcal M}\) and every ideal triangulation \(\mu\) of \({\mathcal M}^ a \)measured foliation \(F_{\mu}(g)\) on \({\mathcal M}\). Thurston had proved that \(F_{\mu}\) provides, for fixed \(\mu\), a parametrization of the Teichmüller space. The goal of the author is to extend in some sense this parametrization to the Thurston boundary of the Teichmüller space. More precisely, he proves the following. Theorem. Let \(g_ n\) be a sequence of points of the Teichmüller space going to infinity. Then, \(g_ n\) converges to a point of the boundary iff \([F_{\mu}(g_ n)]\) converges to the same point. Here [\(\cdot]\) denotes the projective equivalence class.