Quasi-Fuchsian 3-Manifolds and Metrics on Teichm{u}ller Space

An almost Fuchsian 3-manifold is a quasi-Fuchsian manifold which contains an incompressible closed minimal surface with principal curvatures in the range of $(-1,1)$. Such a 3-manifold $M$ admits a foliation of parallel surfaces, whose locus in Teichm{u}ller space is represented as a path $gamma$, we show that $gamma$ joins the conformal structures of the two components of the conformal boundary of $M$. Moreover, we obtain an upper bound for the Teichm{u}ller distance between any two points on $gamma$, in particular, the Teichm{u}ller distance between the two components of the conformal boundary of $M$, in terms of the principal curvatures of the minimal surface in $M$. We also establish a new potential for the Weil-Petersson metric on Teichm{u}ller space.