Parabolic isometries of visible CAT(0) spaces and metrics on moduli space

Abstract

We show that the translation length of any parabolic isometry on a complete semi-uniformly visible CAT(0) space is always zero. As a consequence, we will classify the isometries on visible CAT(0) spaces in terms of translation lengths. We will also show that the moduli space $\mathbb{M}(S_{g,n})$ of surface $S_{g,n}$ of $g$ genus with $n$ punctures admits no complete visible CAT(0) Riemannian metric if $3g+n\ge 5$, which answers the Brock-Farb-McMullen question in the visible case.

16 pages, comments are welcome