Asymptoticity of grafting and Teichmüller rays (Q463148)

The conformal grafting ray determined by a pair \((X, \lambda)\) of a hyperbolic surface \(X\) and a measured geodesic lamination \(\lambda\) is a real-analytic one-parameter family of conformal structures obtained by cutting along \(\lambda\) on \(X\) and inserting a Euclidean metric whose width increases along the ray. Associated to a pair \((X, \lambda)\) is a Teichmüller geodesic ray starting from \(X\) and in the direction \(\lambda\). Theorem 1.1 in the paper states that any grafting ray in Teichmüller space determined by an arational lamination or a multicurve is (strongly) asymptotic to a Teichmüller geodesic ray. The proof of Theorem 1.1 is achieved by constructing quasiconformal maps of small dilatation from sufficiently large grafted surfaces along the grafting ray, to singular flat surfaces that lie along a common Teichmüller ray. It involves a comparison of the Thurston metric, a hybrid of a hyperbolic and Euclidean metric underlying a complex projective surface on one hand, and a singular flat metric induced by a holomorphic quadratic differential on the other. Theorem 1.1 implies Corollary 1.3 which states that the projection of a generic grafting ray to the moduli space is dense. As a further application of the techniques in the proof of Theorem 1.1, Theorem 1.4 is obtained by careful approximation of an arational lamination with multicurves. It states that the set of points in Teichmüller space obtained by integer (\(2\pi\)-) graftings on any hyperbolic surface projects to a dense set in the moduli space. This implies (Theorem 1.5) that the conformal surfaces underlying complex projective structures with any fixed Fuchsian holonomy are dense in the moduli space.