The vanishing rate of Weil-Petersson sectional curvatures

DOI10.1007/S10711-021-00650-XMaRDI QIDQ2665232zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Scott A. Wolpert

Publication date 18 November 2021

Published in Geometriae Dedicata (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.09859

zbMATH Keywords

Beltrami differentialsGreen's functionWeil-Petersson sectional curvatures

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Teichmüller theory for Riemann surfaces (30F60) Integral representations, integral operators, integral equations methods in two dimensions (31A10) Moduli of Riemann surfaces, Teichmüller theory (complex-analytic aspects in several variables) (32G15) Methods of global Riemannian geometry, including PDE methods; curvature restrictions (53C21)

Abstract: The Weil-Petersson metric for the moduli space of Riemann surfaces has negative sectional curvature. Surfaces represented in the complement of a compact set in the moduli space have short geodesics. At such surfaces the Weil-Petersson metric is approximately a product metric. An almost product metric has sections with almost vanishing curvature. We bound the sectional curvature away from zero in terms of the product of lengths of short geodesics on Riemann surfaces. We give examples and an expectation for the actual vanishing rate.

Review text

The Weil-Petersson Kähler metric on the moduli space of hyperbolic surfaces has been intensively studied by Teichmüller theorists. It is an incomplete metric with negative sectional curvature. Except in dimension \(1\), the sectional curvature has infimum \(-\infty\) and supremum \(0\), see [the author, J. Differ. Geom. 91, No. 2, 321--359 (2012; Zbl 1252.32022)] for more details. In this article, sectional curvatures are bounded from above by \(-C\sigma^7\), where \(C\) is a positive constant that depends on the topological type and \(\sigma\) is the product of small geodesic-lengths. As the author shows, this bound is non optimal. The optimal exponent is conjectured to be \(3\), as supported by some examples carried out in details at the end of the paper. The main result is obtained by relating the sectional curvatures, via pairing of Beltrami differentials, to an integral operator, which is morally the inverse of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on the surface. The kernel of this operator is a Green function represented by a sum over the elements of the uniformizing group. This sum behaves as an exponential distance sum for large values. In order to estimate it, one exploits the thick-thin decomposition of hyperbolic surfaces, and Dehn parametrization of isotopy classes of curves.

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Cited in

(2)

• The Weil–Petersson geometry of the moduli space of Riemann surfaces
• Uniform bounds for Weil-Petersson curvatures

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