The vanishing rate of Weil-Petersson sectional curvatures (Q2665232)

The Weil-Petersson Kähler metric on the moduli space of hyperbolic surfaces has been intensively studied by Teichmüller theorists. It is an incomplete metric with negative sectional curvature. Except in dimension \(1\), the sectional curvature has infimum \(-\infty\) and supremum \(0\), see [the author, J. Differ. Geom. 91, No. 2, 321--359 (2012; Zbl 1252.32022)] for more details. In this article, sectional curvatures are bounded from above by \(-C\sigma^7\), where \(C\) is a positive constant that depends on the topological type and \(\sigma\) is the product of small geodesic-lengths. As the author shows, this bound is non optimal. The optimal exponent is conjectured to be \(3\), as supported by some examples carried out in details at the end of the paper. The main result is obtained by relating the sectional curvatures, via pairing of Beltrami differentials, to an integral operator, which is morally the inverse of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on the surface. The kernel of this operator is a Green function represented by a sum over the elements of the uniformizing group. This sum behaves as an exponential distance sum for large values. In order to estimate it, one exploits the thick-thin decomposition of hyperbolic surfaces, and Dehn parametrization of isotopy classes of curves.