Rigidity of Teichmüller curves (Q730679)

A Teichmüller curve is a holomorphic map \(f: V \rightarrow \mathcal M_g\) from a Riemann surface \(V\) to the moduli space of compact genus \(g > 1\) Riemann surfaces \(\mathcal M_g\) which is isometric with respect to the Kobayashi metrics. Equivalently, it is an isometrically embedded (with respect to the Teichmüller metric) copy of a hyperbolic surface \(\tilde{V}\) in \(\mathcal M_g\). The main result of this note is that Teichmüller curves are \textit{rigid}, that, is, cannot be continuously deformed. As a consequence, the Riemann surface \(V\) and the embedding map \(f\) are both defined over an algebraic number field. The proof follows from convexity of length functions along earthquake paths, due to \textit{S. A. Wolpert} [J. Differ. Geom. 23, 143--174 (1986; Zbl 0592.53037)], and the fact that for a fixed hyperbolic surface there are only finitely many isometric embeddings into \(\mathcal M_g\) for any fixed \(g\).