Marked length spectrum rigidity for surface amalgams
This article is about marked length spectrum rigidity of thick, negatively curved, 2-dimensional \(P\)-manifolds. These are, roughly speaking, 2-dimensional spaces obtained by glueing together a collection of negatively curved compact surfaces along their boundaries, such that each glueing involves at least three of the surfaces. Marked length spectrum rigidity is a classical conjecture that states that the marked length spectrum -- the map that associates to each homotopy class of closed curves the length of its shortest representative -- determines the space up to isometry. The main result of this paper is that, if \((X, g_1)\) and \((X, g_2)\) are both simple, thick, negatively curved, 2-dimensional \(P\)-manifolds such that \(g_1\) and \(g_2\) induce the same marked length spectrum, then there exists an isometry \((X, g_1) \rightarrow (X, g_2)\) that is isotopic to the identity. In order to prove this, it is also proven that the geodesic flow on hyperbolic \(P\)-manifolds is Anosov with respect to the Bowen-Margulis measure; a result that will be useful for future work on hyperbolic \(P\)-manifolds.\N\NMarked length spectrum rigidity is a famous open problem in the geometry of negatively curved (or Anosov) spaces. The earliest results go back to 1990, when two independent proofs [\textit{C. B. Croke}, Comment. Math. Helv. 65, No. 1, 150--169 (1990; Zbl 0704.53035); \textit{J.-P. Otal}, Ann. Math. (2) 131, No. 1, 151--162 (1990; Zbl 0699.58018)] were given for rigidity of negatively/non-positively curved, closed surfaces. For higher-dimensional manifolds, progress has been very limited, with a positive result for locally symmetric spaces in the 1990s [\textit{U. Hamenstädt}, Geom. Funct. Anal. 9, No. 1, 90--140 (1999; Zbl 0951.37007)] and a very interesting `local' result in the late 2010s [\textit{C. Guillarmou} and \textit{T. Lefeuvre}, Ann. Math. (2) 190, No. 1, 321--344 (2019; Zbl 1506.53054)]. However, more progress has been made for 2-dimensional spaces that are not closed manifolds. There are various positive results for compact manifolds with boundary, or with singularities. This article adds a natural class of spaces to the class of spaces for which Marked Length Spectrum Rigidity is known.\N\NThe strategy of the proof is as follows: The authors first consider \(P\)-manifolds whose chambers (the pieces that are glued together) all admit an inclusion into a closed surface that is contained in \(X\). They then consider the universal covering \(\tilde{X}\) of \(X\). Since \((X, g_1)\) and \((X, g_2)\) have the same marked length spectrum, the identity map on \(\tilde{X}\) induces a Möbius homeomorphism between the visual boundaries. We now have to show that this Möbius homeomorphism can be extended to an isometry between the interior spaces. This is a classical strategy to prove marked length spectrum rigidity. In general, such a Möbius homeomorphism can be extended to a \((1,C)\)-quasi-isometry, meaning that it is an isometry up to an additive error. However, for surfaces this additive error can be removed, using Anosov-properties of the geodesic flow and properties of surfaces. The authors use this to produce isometries defined in different parts of \(\tilde{X}\) and show that these isometries can be patched together to form an isometry on the entire space. They then reduce the general case to this special one.
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