Publications

Publications of SPP2026

On this site you find preprints and publications produced within the projects and with the support of the DFG priority programme „Geometry at Infinity“.

44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups

We prove that the saddle connection graph associated to any half-translation surface is 4–hyperbolic and uniformly quasi-isometric to the regular countably infinite-valent tree. Consequently, the saddle connection graph is not quasi-isometrically rigid. We also characterise its Gromov boundary as the set of straight foliations with no saddle connections. In our arguments, we give a generalisation of the unicorn paths in the arc graph which may be of independent interest.

 

Related project(s):
44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups

In 1986 William P. Thurston introduced the celebrated (asymmetric) Lipschitz distance on the Teichmueller space of a (closed or punctured) surface. In this paper we extend his work to the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary endowed the arc distance. In this new setting we construct a large family of geodesics, which generalize Thurston's stretch lines. We prove that the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary, endowed with the arc distance, is a geodesic metric space. Furthermore, the arc distance is induced by a Finsler metric. As a corollary, we describe a new class of geodesics in the Teichmueller space of a closed/punctured surface that are not stretch lines in the sense of Thurston.

 

Related project(s):
44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups

In 1986 William P. Thurston introduced the celebrated (asymmetric) Lipschitz distance on the Teichmueller space of a (closed or punctured) surface. In this paper we extend his work to the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary endowed the arc distance. In this new setting we construct a large family of geodesics, which generalize Thurston's stretch lines. We prove that the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary, endowed with the arc distance, is a geodesic metric space. Furthermore, the arc distance is induced by a Finsler metric. As a corollary, we describe a new class of geodesics in the Teichmueller space of a closed/punctured surface that are not stretch lines in the sense of Thurston.

 

Related project(s):
44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups

In 1986 William P. Thurston introduced the celebrated (asymmetric) Lipschitz distance on the Teichmueller space of a (closed or punctured) surface. In this paper we extend his work to the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary endowed the arc distance. In this new setting we construct a large family of geodesics, which generalize Thurston's stretch lines. We prove that the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary, endowed with the arc distance, is a geodesic metric space. Furthermore, the arc distance is induced by a Finsler metric. As a corollary, we describe a new class of geodesics in the Teichmueller space of a closed/punctured surface that are not stretch lines in the sense of Thurston.

 

Related project(s):
44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups

For a half-translation surface , the associated saddle connection complex  is the simplicial complex where vertices are the saddle connections on , with simplices spanned by sets of pairwise disjoint saddle connections. This complex can be naturally regarded as an induced subcomplex of the arc complex. We prove that any simplicial isomorphism  between saddle connection complexes is induced by an affine diffeomorphism . In particular, this shows that the saddle connection complex is a complete invariant of affine equivalence classes of half-translation surfaces. Throughout our proof, we develop several combinatorial criteria of independent interest for detecting various geometric objects on a half-translation surface.

 

Related project(s):
44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups

In 1986 William P. Thurston introduced the celebrated (asymmetric) Lipschitz distance on the Teichmueller space of a (closed or punctured) surface. In this paper we extend his work to the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary endowed the arc distance. In this new setting we construct a large family of geodesics, which generalize Thurston's stretch lines. We prove that the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary, endowed with the arc distance, is a geodesic metric space. Furthermore, the arc distance is induced by a Finsler metric. As a corollary, we describe a new class of geodesics in the Teichmueller space of a closed/punctured surface that are not stretch lines in the sense of Thurston.

 

Related project(s):
44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups

In 1986 William P. Thurston introduced the celebrated (asymmetric) Lipschitz distance on the Teichmueller space of a (closed or punctured) surface. In this paper we extend his work to the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary endowed the arc distance. In this new setting we construct a large family of geodesics, which generalize Thurston's stretch lines. We prove that the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary, endowed with the arc distance, is a geodesic metric space. Furthermore, the arc distance is induced by a Finsler metric. As a corollary, we describe a new class of geodesics in the Teichmueller space of a closed/punctured surface that are not stretch lines in the sense of Thurston.

 

Related project(s):
44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups

In this paper we develop a bridge between model theory, geometric topology, and geometric group theory. In particular, we investigate the Ivanov Metaconjecture from the point of view of model theory, and more broadly we seek to answer the general question: why does the curve graph of a surface play such a central role in the study of surfaces and mapping class groups?

More specifically, we consider a surface $\Sigma$ of finite type and its curve graph $C(\Sigma)$, and we investigate its first-order theory in the language of graph theory. Crucially, $C(\Sigma)$  is bi-interpretable with a certain object called the augmented Cayley graph of the mapping class group of the surface. We use this bi-interpretation to prove that the theory of the curve graph is \omega--stable, to compute its Morley rank, and to show that it has quantifier elimination with respect to the class of $\forall \exists$--formulae. We also show that many of the complexes which are naturally associated to a surface are interpretable in $C(\Sigma)$. This shows that these complexes are all \omega--stable and admit certain a priori bounds on their Morley ranks. We are able to use Morley ranks to prove that various complexes are not bi--interpretable with the curve graph. As a consequence of quantifier elimination, we show that algebraic intersection number is not definable in the first order theory of the curve graph. Finally, we prove that the curve graph of a surface enjoys a novel phenomenon that we call interpretation rigidity. That is, if surfaces $\Sigma_1$ and $\Sigma_2$ admits curve graphs that are mutually interpretable, then $\sigma_1$ and $\Sigma_2$ are homeomorphic to each other. Along the way, numerous technical results are obtained.

 

Related project(s):
44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups

In 1986 William P. Thurston introduced the celebrated (asymmetric) Lipschitz distance on the Teichmueller space of a (closed or punctured) surface. In this paper we extend his work to the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary endowed the arc distance. In this new setting we construct a large family of geodesics, which generalize Thurston's stretch lines. We prove that the Teichmueller space of a surface with boundary, endowed with the arc distance, is a geodesic metric space. Furthermore, the arc distance is induced by a Finsler metric. As a corollary, we describe a new class of geodesics in the Teichmueller space of a closed/punctured surface that are not stretch lines in the sense of Thurston.

 

Related project(s):
44Actions of mapping class groups and their subgroups