Weil-Petersson geometry of Teichmüller-Coxeter complex and its finite rank property (Q964189)

Let \(\Sigma\) be a closed topological surface with genus \(g >1\). Let \(\mathcal T\) denote the Teichmüller space of marked Riemann surfaces homeomorphic to \(\Sigma\). \(\mathcal T\) can be equipped with many different metric, the most studied of which are the Teichmüller metric (which measures quasi-conformal dilatation) and the Weil-Petersson (WP) metric, which is a Riemannian metric. An important property of the WP metric is that it is incomplete. Also, the metric completion \(\bar{\mathcal T}\) is a CAT(0)-space. The points in \(\bar{\mathcal T} \backslash \mathcal T\) consist of noded surfaces which have simple closed geodesics of hyperbolic length zero. While \(\mathcal T\) itself only has one-dimensional flats (WP geodesics) the completion \(\bar{\mathcal T}\) has higher dimensional flats corresponding to collection of curves that separate \(\Sigma\) into multiple components. This gives a bound on dimension of \(g + \lfloor{g/2}\rfloor -1\). Thus, \(\bar{\mathcal T}\) has \textit{finite rank}. In this paper, the author proves that \(\bar{ \mathcal T}\) satisfies another notion of finite rank, namely the notion of a CAT(0)-space being \textbf{FR}. A CAT(0)-space is said to be \textbf{FR} if there are \(\epsilon_0, D_0 >0\) such that any subset \(X\) with diameter at least \(D_0\) is contained in a metric ball of radius \((1-\epsilon_0)D/\sqrt{2}\). The key ingredients in the proof are the description of the tangent cone with respect to the WP metric as a Coxeter complex (due to Wolpert), as well as an abstract result on actions of the fundamental group of a compact Riemannian manifold on \(\bar{\mathcal T}\).