Cell decompositions of Teichmüller spaces of surfaces with boundary (Q764078)

In his paper [\textit{F. Luo}, ``Rigidity of polyhedral surfaces'', I: in: Ji, Lizhen (ed.) et al., Fourth international congress of Chinese mathematicians. Proceedings of the ICCM '07, Hangzhou, China, December 17--22, 2007. AMS/IP Studies in Advanced Mathematics 48, 201--217 (2010; Zbl 1239.52025); II: Geom. Topol. 13, No. 3, 1265--1312 (2009; Zbl 1160.52012); III: ibid. 15, No. 4, 2299--2319 (2011; Zbl 1242.52027); see also \url{arXiv:math/0612714}], the second author of the paper under review introduced a family \(\psi_h\) (\(h\geq 0\)) of coordinate systems for the Teichmüller space of a surface with boundary. The parameter \(h\) has some hyperbolic-geometry meaning and appears as the exponent of the hyperbolic cosine function. \textit{G. Mondello}, in his paper [J. Differ. Geom. 81, No. 2, 391--436 (2009; Zbl 1165.53026)] showed that the system of coordinates \(\psi_0\) can be used to produce a cell decomposition of Teichmüller space which is invariant under the action of the mapping class group. In the paper under review, the authors show that the same can be done with \(\psi_h\), for any \(h\geq 2\). The cell decomposition of Teichmüller space is constructed through the arc complex. More precisely, let \(S\) be a compact surface of negative Euler characteristic with nonempty boundary, let \(\mathrm{Teich}(S)\) be its Teichmüller space, let \(A(S)\) be its arc complex and let \(A_\infty (S)\) be the subcomplex of \(A(S)\) whose simplices are the arc systems whose complement in the surface has one component which is not simply connected. Then, for each \(h\geq 0\), the authors produce a homeomorphism \[ \Pi_h: \mathrm{Teich}(S)\to | A(S) - A_\infty (S)| \times \mathbb{R}_{>0} \] which is equivariant under the action of the mapping class group and such that the restriction of \(\Pi\) on each simplex of maximal dimension is given by the \(\psi_h\)-coordinate.