On elementary antistretch lines (Q960044)

The motivation for this article is the question of whether a geodesic for a given metric on Teichmüller space converges to a point on Thurston's boundary. This question has been studied for the Teichmüller metric, [see \textit{A. Papadopoulos} and \textit{G.Théret}, Handbook of Teichmüller theory. Volume 1. (111--204), IRMA Lectures in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics 11. Zürich: European Mathematical Society (EMS). (2007; Zbl 1113.30038)], and the paper under review studies this question for Thurston's asymmetric metric. Both of these metrics are Finsler metrics, Teichmüller's metric regards Teichmüller space with respect to conformal geometry and Thurston's metric with respect to hyperbolic geometry. Since Thurston's metric is asymmetric, a curve that is a geodesic in one direction may not be a geodesic in the other direction and so there are two different problems for convergence: that of positive convergence in the geodesic direction, solved by \textit{A. Papadopolous} [Topology Appl. 41, 147--177 (1991; Zbl 0761.57009)], and of negative convergence in the other direction. To summarise the result of this paper, we briefly consider some definitions. The stump of a geodesic lamination is the maximal compact sublamination admitting a transverse measure. A geodesic lamination is called elementary when its stump is a collection of simple closed geodesics and for each component of the stump, the infinite isolated geodesics of the lamination which are not in the stump spiral in the same direction. A stretch ray is called elementary if it is directed by an elementary complete geodesic lamination. The main result of the paper under review is a generalisation of results in \textit{G. Théret} [Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn., 32, No. 2, 381--408 (2007; Zbl 1125.30040)], and enlarges the family of stretch lines that negatively converge to Thurston's boundary to the family of elementary stretch lines. Further, the negative limit point is the barycenter of the stump of the complete geodesic lamination directing the antistretch line.