Harmonic measure and arclength (Q802793)

Let \(\Omega\) be a simply connected plane domain and \(\Gamma\) any rectifiable curve and let \(\ell\) denote linear measure (length). Let f map \({\mathbb{D}}\) conformally onto \(\Omega\). In this important paper, the authors prove that \(\ell (f^{-1}(\Gamma \cap \Omega))<\infty\) for all \(\Omega\) holds if and only if \(\Gamma\) is Ahlfors regular, that is \(\ell (\Gamma \cap D)\leq const diam D\) for all disks D. This problem had been open for ten years; results had been obtained by Hayman, Wu, Fernández and many others. A further consequence of the main estimates is that \(E\subset \Gamma \cap \partial \Omega\), \(\ell (f^{-1}(E))>0\Rightarrow \ell (E)>0\), in other words, for sets on a rectifiable curve, positive harmonic measure implies positive linear measure. Previous contributions to this problem were given e.g. by Øksendal, Kaufman and Wu. The proof uses the universal covering map \(\Phi\) of \({\mathbb{D}}\) onto \({\mathbb{C}}\setminus E\). The authors construct a Lipschitz domain G that lies in the Dirichlet fundamental domain of the Fuchsian group associated with \(\Phi\) such that E has positive harmonic measure also with respect to \(\Phi\) (G) and that satisfies \(\ell (\Phi (\partial G))<\infty\). The intricate construction uses estimates of the Schwarzian derivative among other things.