Polyhedral approximation of metric surfaces and applications to uniformization (Q6117103)

The authors show that any length surface is the Gromov-Hausdorff limit of polyhedral surfaces with controlled geometry. A length surface is a length metric space homeomorphic to a 2-manifold, with or without boundary. A polyhedral surface is formed by gluing locally finitely many planar polygonal faces isometrically along edges, equipped with the induced length metric. A sequence of maps \(f_n:X_n\to Y_n\), \(n\in\mathbb N\), between metric spaces is an approximately isometric sequence if \(f_n\) is a \(\epsilon_n\)-isometry, \(\epsilon_n>0\), for all \(n\in\mathbb N\), and \(\epsilon_n\to0\) as \(n\to\infty\). For any metric space, the Hausdorff 2-measure of a set \(A\subset X\) is defined by \(\mathcal H^2(A)=\lim_{\delta\to\infty}\mathcal H_{\delta}^2(A)\), where \(\mathcal H_{\delta}^2(A)=\inf\{\sum_{j=1}^{\infty}C\text{diam}(A_j)^2\}\), \(C>0\), and the infimum is taken over all collections of sets \(\{A_j\}_{j=1}^{\infty}\), which \(A\subset\bigcup_{j=1}^{\infty}A_j\) and \(\text{diam}(A_j)<\delta\) for each \(j\). The authors prove the following theorems. Theorem. Let \(X\) be a length surface. There exists a sequence of polyhedral surfaces \((X_n)_{n=1}^{\infty}\) each homeomorphic to \(X\) such that the following properties hold for \(K\geq1\): \begin{itemize} \item[(1)] There exists an approximately isometric sequence of maps \(f_n:X_n\to X\), \(n\in\mathbb N\). Moreover, each \(f_n\) is a topological embedding; \item[(2)] For each compact set \(A\subset X\), \(\limsup_{n\to\infty}\mathcal H^2(f_n^{-1}(A))\leq K\mathcal H^2(A)\). \end{itemize} For \(K\geq1\), a mapping \(h:X\to Y\) between two metric spaces of locally finite Hausdorff 2-measures is weakly \(K\)-quasiconformal if it is continuous, surjective and monotone and if it satisfies the modulus inequality \(\text{mod}\;\Gamma\leq K\text{mod}\;h(\Gamma)\) for every path family \(\Gamma\) in \(X\). Let \(\mathbb D\) denote the open unit disk in \(\mathbb C\) and \(\hat{\mathbb C}\) is the Riemann sphere. Theorem. Let \(X\) be a length surface of locally finite Hausdorff 2-measure homeomorphic to \(\hat{\mathbb C}\), \(\overline{\mathbb D}\) or \(\mathbb C\). Then there is a weakly \(K\)-quasiconformal mapping \(h:\Omega\to X\) for \(K=4/\pi\), where \(\Omega\) is either \(\hat{\mathbb C}\), \(\overline{\mathbb D}\) or \(\mathbb D\) or \(\mathbb C\), respectively. Also, the authors replace the definition of weak quasiconformality by other statements.