Measured foliations and harmonic maps of surfaces (Q5960507)

The principal aim of this article is to give a foliation analogue to the existence, for any complex structure on a surface \(M^2\) and in each homotopy class, of a unique harmonic diffeomorphism from \(M^2\) to a Riemannian surface \(N^2\) of negative curvature. The foliations considered here, called measured foliations, are singular, but the singularities must be isolated and \(k\)-pronged, and equipped with measures invariant along the leaves. The main construction associates, first, to each conformal structure on \(M^2\) a unique harmonic map, within a given homotopy class from \(M^2\) to \(N^2\), in the usual manner. Then, as the \((2,0)\)-part of the pull-back of the metric by this harmonic map is holomorphic, it defines a canonical measured foliation. This paper shows that this map from the Teichmüller space into the space of measured foliations is a homeomorphism. Of particular interest is the injectivity proof, which involves the minimal suspension of a harmonic map, i.e., after a lift to universal covers, an associated map from \(\tilde{M}\) into \(\tilde{N} \times (T,2d)\), where the tree \(T\) is the leaf space of the lifted foliation and \(d\) is inherited from the transverse measure.