Bijections of geodesic lamination space preserving left Hausdorff convergence (Q2003536)

Let \(S\) be a closed oriented surface of genus \(g \ge 2\); as the authors note, the mapping class group and extended mapping class group of \(S\) (allowing also orientation-reversing homeomorphisms) admit actions on spaces with various structures: Teichmüller spaces with complex analytic structures and also equipped with various types of metrics, combinatorial and piecewise-linear structures (curve complexes, measured lamination spaces) and topological structures (spaces of laminations and foliations); often such structures are rigid in the sense that their automorphism groups coincide with the natural actions of the mapping class groups. The authors of the present paper consider the space \(\mathcal{GL}(S)\) of geodesic laminations on \(S\) (for a fixed hyperbolic metric, as defined by Thurston in his Princeton Lecture Notes). Thurston considered two topologies on \(\mathcal{GL}(S)\), the geometric (or Thurston) topology and the Hausdorff topology. It is shown in a paper by \textit{C. Charitos} et al. [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 142, No. 6, 2179--2191 (2014; Zbl 1311.57021)] that the homeomorphism group of \(\mathcal{GL}(S)\) with the Thurston topology coincides with the extended mapping class group, but that for the Hausdorff topology it is much larger. In the present paper the authors define and study an asymmetric distance function on \(\mathcal{GL}(S)\), the \textit{left Hausdorff distance function} which is an asymmetric version of the Hausdorff distance (between compact subsets of a metric space). Their main result is the rigidity result that the natural map from the extended mapping class group into the group of bijections of \(\mathcal{GL}(S)\) which preserve left Hausdorff convergence is an isomorphism.