Canonical metrics on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces. I (Q2566629)

The most interesting results of this paper are the detailed understanding of two new complete Kähler metrics with nice properties and the Kähler-Einstein metric on the Teichmüller and the moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. The two new metrics, the Ricci metric and the perturbed Ricci metric, are naturally defined as the negative Ricci curvature of the Weil-Petersson metric and a combination of it with the Weil-Petersson metric. These new metrics and the Kähler-Einstein metric on the Teichmüller and moduli spaces all have Poincaré type boundary behavior. The authors study in detail the asymptotic behaviors and the signs of the curvatures of these new metrics. In particular, the perturbed Ricci metric is a complete Kähler metric with bounded negative holomorphic sectional and Ricci curvature and bounded bisectional curvature. As a consequence, by using the new metrics as a bridge and some simple argument with Schwarz lemma, all of the classical complete metrics are equivalent to the Ricci and the perturbed Ricci metric on the Teichmüller and moduli spaces.