Paper detail

Hausdorff dimension and the Weil-Petersson extension to quasifuchsian space

We consider a natural non-negative two-form G on quasifuchsian space that extends the Weil-Petersson metric on Teichmuller space. We describe completely the positive definite locus of G, showing that it is a positive definite metric off the fuchsian diagonal of quasifuchsian space and is only zero on the "pure-bending'' tangent vectors to the fuchsian diagonal . We show that G is equal to the pullback of the pressure metric from dynamics. We use the properties of G to prove that at any critical point of the Hausdorff dimension function on quasifuchsian space the Hessian of the Hausdorff dimension function must be positive definite on at least a half-dimensional subspace of the tangent space. In particular this implies that Hausdorff dimension has no local maxima on quasifuchsian space.