Geometry of the Funk metric on Weil–Petersson spaces

Abstract

We discuss the Funk function $F(x,y)$ on a Teichmüller space with its Weil–Petersson metric $(\mathcal{T },d)$ introduced in Yamada (Convex bodies in Euclidean and Weil–Petersson geometries, 2011), which was originally studied for an open convex subset in a Euclidean space by Funk [cf. Papadopoulos and Troyanov (Math Proc Cambridge Philos Soc 147:419–437, 2009)]. $F(x,y)$ is an asymmetric distance and invariant by the action of the mapping class group. Unlike the original one, $F(x,y)$ is not always convex in $y$ with $x$ fixed (Corollary 2.11, Theorem 5.1). For each pseudo-Anosov mapping class $g$ and a point $x \in \mathcal{T }$, there exists $E$ such that for all $n\not = 0$, $\log |n| -E \le F(x,g^n.x) \le \log |n|+E$ (Corollary 2.10), while $F(x,g^n.x)$ is bounded if $g$ is a Dehn twist (Proposition 2.13). The translation length is defined by $|g|_F=\inf _{x \in \mathcal{T }}F(x,g.x)$ for a map $g: \mathcal{T }\rightarrow \mathcal{T }$. If $g$ is a pseudo-Anosov mapping class, there exists $Q$ such that for all $n \not = 0$, $\log |n| -Q \le |g^n|_F \le \log |n| + Q.$ For sufficiently large $n$, $|g^n|_F >0$ and the infimum is achieved. If $g$ is a Dehn twist, then $|g^n|_F=0$ for each $n$ (Theorem 2.16). Some geodesics in $(\mathcal{T },d)$ are geodesics in terms of $F$ as well. We find a decomposition of $\mathcal{T }$ by sets, each of which is foliated by those geodesics (Theorem 4.10).