A connected string of long thick and dominants

Abstract

We prove that every Teichmuller geodesic of a finite type surface contains a string of intersecting long, thick and dominant segments, such that the distance between consecutive segments is bounded. This is key to obtaining some results about Teichmuller geodesics which mimic those for hyperbolic geodesics. These results have important applications to results about the geometry of hyperbolic three-manifolds.

31 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:math/0404007