Skinning maps (Q849201)

Suppose that \(M\) is a compact oriented irreducible atoroidal \(3\)-manifold with connected incompressible boundary that is neither empty nor a torus. Then one can, via the deformation theory of Ahlfors and Bers and the stability theorems of Marden and Sullivan, identify the space of all geometrically finite hyperbolic structures with no cusps \(GF(M)\) with the Teichmüller space of the boundary of \(M\), \(T(\partial M)\). One obtains a map \(GF(M) \sim T(\partial M) \rightarrow T(\partial M) \times T(\overline{\partial M})\), where the first coordinate is the identity and the second coordinate is the skinning map \(\sigma_{M}:T(\partial M) \rightarrow T(\overline{\partial M})\). The paper under review answers a question of Minsky, and proves that there are upper and lower bounds on the diameter of the skinning map \(\sigma_{M}\), which depend only on the volume of \(M\). On the way to proving this theorem, a filling result is used, which essentially says that as one performs higher Dehn fillings on \(M\), the skinning maps for the filled manifolds converge uniformly on all of Teichmüller space to the skinning map of \(M\). Further it is shown that there are manifolds whose skinning maps have arbitrarily small or arbitrarily large diameter, the former coming from joint work of the author of the paper and Bromberg. This shows that the constants in the main theorem cannot be taken to be universal over all such manifolds. Finally, the author includes a proof of \textit{W. Thurston}'s bounded image theorem [Low-dimensional topology, Proc. Conf., Bangor/Engl. 1979, Vol. 1, Lond. Math. Soc. Lect. Note Ser. 48, 9--25 (1982; Zbl 0483.57007)], that is, if \(M\) is acylindrical, then the image of \(\sigma_{M}\) has compact closure. This well written paper includes an extensive reference list for the interested reader, and uses a variety of results from the world of \(3\)-manifolds which are explained through the text.