A characterization of short curves of a Teichmüller geodesic.
A hyperbolic geodesic joining two punctures on a Riemann surface has infinite length. To obtain a useful distance-like quantity we define a finite pseudo-length of such a geodesic in terms of the hyperbolic length of its surrounding geodesic loop. There is a well defined angle between two geodesics meeting at a puncture, and our pseudo-trigonometry connects these angles with pseudo-lengths. We state and prove a theorem resembling Ptolemy's classical theorem on cyclic quadrilaterals and three general...
In this paper we establish the action of the Grothendieck-Teichmüller group on the prime order torsion elements of the profinite fundamental group . As an intermediate result, we prove that the conjugacy classes of prime order torsion of are exactly the discrete prime order ones of the .
The Root Conjecture predicts that every pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphism of a closed surface has Teichmüller approximate th roots for all . In this paper, we replace the Teichmüller topology by the heights-widths topology – that is induced by convergence of tangent quadratic differentials with respect to both the heights and widths functionals – and show that every pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphism of a closed surface has heights-widths approximate th roots for all .