The geometry of right-angled Artin subgroups of mapping class groups (Q426205)

Let \(S\) be a surface, \(\mathrm{Mod}(S)\) its mapping class group, and \(\mathcal{T}(S)\) its Teichmüller space. Let \(\Gamma\) be a graph with vertex set \(\{ s_1, \dots, s_n \}\) and \(\mathbb{X} = \{ X_1, \dots, X_n\}\) a collection of nonannular essential subsurfaces \(X_1, \dots, X_n\) of \(S\) such that \(X_i \cap X_j = \emptyset\) if and only if \(\{s_i,s_j\}\) is an edge of \(\Gamma\), and if \(X_i \cap X_j \not= \emptyset\) then \(X_i \not\subseteq X_j\) and \(X_i \not\supseteq X_j\). The right-angled Artin group \(G(\Gamma)\) associated to \(\Gamma\) is presented by \(G(\Gamma) = \langle s_1, \dots, s_n \, | \, [s_i,s_j]=1\) if \(\{ s_i, s_j \}\) is an edge of \(\Gamma \rangle\). Let \(f_i\) be an element of \(\mathrm{Mod}(S)\) which is supported on \(X_i\) and whose restriction on \(X_i\) is pseudo-Anosov. Then \(f_i\) acts on the complex of curves \(\mathcal{C}(X_i)\), and we define \(\tau_{X_i} (f_i) = \underset k \rightarrow \infty {\lim} d_{X_i}(\alpha, f^k(\alpha))/k,\) where \(\alpha\) is any curve in \(X\), and \(d_{X_i}\) is the distance in \(\mathcal{C}(X_i)\). The main theorem (Theorem 2.2) of this paper is, under the above condition, there exists a constant \(C > 0\) such that if \(\tau_{X_i}(f_i) \geq C\) for all \(i=1, \dots, n\), then the homomorphism \(\phi: G(\Gamma) \rightarrow \mathrm{Mod}(\Gamma)\) defined by \(\phi (s_i) = f_i\) is a quasi-isometric embedding, and the orbit map \(G(\Gamma) \to \mathcal{T}(S)\) is a quasi-isometric embedding for the Teichmüller metric and the Weil-Petersson metric. Furthermore, a condition on \(\sigma \in G(\Gamma)\) such that \(\phi(\sigma)\) is pseudo-Anosov is given (Theorem 6.1), and it is shown that, when the genus of \(S\) is at least \(3\), there are infinitely many nonconjugate genus \(h (\geq 2)\) surface subgroups of \(\mathrm{Mod}(S)\), each of which acts cocompactly on some quasi-isometrically embedded hyperbolic plane in the Teichmüller space \(\mathcal{T}(S)\) (Corollary 1.3).