Coarse density of subsets of moduli space

Abstract

We show that an algebraic subvariety of the moduli space of genus g Riemann surfaces is coarsely dense with respect to the Teichmüller metric (or Thurston metric) if and only if it has full dimension. We apply this to determine which strata of abelian differentials have coarsely dense projection to moduli space. Furthermore, we prove a result on coarse density of projections of GL 2 (ℝ)-orbit closures in the space of abelian differentials.