A Teichmuller space for negatively curved surfaces

We first describe the action of the fundamental group of a closed surface of variable negative curvature on the oriented geodesics in its universal covering in terms of a naturally-defined flat connection whose holonomy lies in the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of S^1 x R. Consideration of the holonomy necessitates an extension from Riemannian to Finsler metrics. The second part of the paper follows the Higgs bundle approach to flat connections adapted to this infinite dimensional group and focuses on a family of metrics, relying on a construction of O.Biquard, which is parametrized by the infinite-dimensional space of CR functions on the unit circle bundle of a hyperbolic surface. This generates an alternative approach to defining a connection and offers the possibility of this vector space representing a moduli space which generalizes and includes the classical Teichmueller space.

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