Rigidity of groups of circle diffeomorphisms and Teichmüller spaces (Q2177500)

The universal Teichmüller space \(T\) can be thought of as the group \(\mathrm{QS}(\mathbb{S})\) of quasisymmetric homeomorphisms of the unit circle \(\mathbb{S}\), quotiented by the subgroup \(\text{Möb}(\mathbb{S})\) of Möbius maps. This paper concerns the group \(\mathrm{Diff}_+^{1+\alpha}(\mathbb{S})\) of orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of the unit circle \(\mathbb{S}\) whose derivatives are \(\alpha\)-Hölder continuous. In a related work [Trans. Lond. Math. Soc. 4, No. 1, 129--147 (2017; Zbl 1397.30019)], the author defined a subspace \(T^\alpha_0\) of the universal Teichmüller space \(T\), as the quotient of \(\mathrm{Diff}_+^{1+\alpha}(\mathbb{S})\) by \(\text{Möb}(\mathbb{S})\). This paper provides an answer to the following question: given a group \(G \subset \mathrm{Diff}_+^{1+\alpha}(\mathbb{S})\), is there a fixed-point of the action of \(G\) on \(T^\alpha_0\)? The strategy is to consider the 2-integrable Teichmüller space \(T^2\) (which contains \(T^\alpha_0\) if \(\alpha>\frac{1}{2}\)) equipped with a negatively-curved Weil-Petersson metric \(d^2_{WP}\), see [\textit{G. Cui}, Sci. China, Ser. A 43, No. 3, 267--279 (2000; Zbl 0965.30018); \textit{L. A. Takhtajan} and \textit{L.-P. Teo}, Weil-Petersson metric on the universal Teichmüller space. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (2006; Zbl 1243.32010)]. Any suitably bounded subgroup \(G\) acting on \((T^2, d^2_{WP})\) will have a fixed-point, since the space is \(\text{CAT}(0)\) and \(\mathrm{Diff}_+^{1+\alpha}(\mathbb{S})\) acts by isometries. Under an additional assumption that \(G\) is non-abelian and infinite, the author proves a ``rigidity'' theorem stating that shows that such a fixed-point of \(G\) in fact lies in the smaller space \(T^\alpha_0\). The proof of the rigidity theorem, interesting in its own right, uses a ``boot-strapping'' of regularity, based on some analytical results concerning the boundary correspondence of asymptotically conformal self-mappings of the unit disk \(\mathbb{D}\), and norm-estimates of their Beltrami differentials. Such results go back to the work of \textit{L. Carleson} [J. Anal. Math. 19, 1--13 (1967; Zbl 0186.13701)]; in particular, the author had shown in the related paper cited above that any map in \(\mathrm{Diff}_+^{1+\alpha}(\mathbb{S})\) arises as the boundary extension of a quasiconformal self-map of \(\mathbb{D}\) whose Betrami differential has a suitable decay condition towards the boundary. The paper also considers the \(p\)-integrable Teichmüller space \(T^p\) and proves a theorem with the weaker assumption \(\alpha>1/p\).