The pants graph as a combinatorial model for the Teichmüller space of a non-orientable surface
Geometric Topology
2026-07-17 v1
Abstract
We study the relation between the pants graph of a non-orientable surface and that of its orientable double cover. Given a non-orientable surface with orientable double cover , we construct a natural map between pants graphs induced by lifting pants decompositions. We prove that this map defines a quasi-isometric embedding of into . Using Brock's quasi-isometry between and Teichm\"uller space endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric, together with the identification of the Teichm\"uller space of with the fixed-point locus of the deck involution on , we prove that is quasi-isometric to the Teichm\"uller space of equipped with the induced Weil-Petersson metric.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.15792,
title = {The pants graph as a combinatorial model for the Teichmüller space of a non-orientable surface},
author = {Michał Stukow and Błażej Szepietowski and Jakub Szmelter-Tomczuk},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.15792},
year = {2026}
}