Average bending of convex pleated planes in hyperbolic three-space (Q1127745)

A pleated surface in 3-dimensional hyperbolic space is an isometric embedding of the 2-dimensional hyperbolic plane, ``pleated'' along certain ``bending lines''. They were introduced by W. Thurston as part of his description of the Teichmüller theory of Kleinian groups. In this paper the author develops the theory from a more metric point of view. His main result is a universal bound for a suitable defined ``average bending'' of a convex pleated surface.The proof is direct and geometric. The author uses this result to give a universal estimate for the minimal Lipschitz constant of maps between two quasi-Fuchsian surfaces of the same type, as well as some further results about quasi-Fuchsian groups.