Geometric inflexibility and 3-manifolds that fiber over the circle

Abstract

We prove that hyperbolic 3-manifolds are geometrically inflexible: a unit quasiconformal deformation of a Kleinian group extends to an equivariant bi-Lipschitz diffeomorphism between quotients whose pointwise bi-Lipschitz constant decays exponentially in the distance from the boundary of the convex core for points in the thick part. Estimates at points in the thin part are controlled by similar estimates on the complex lengths of short curves. We use this inflexibility to give a new proof of the convergence of pseudo-Anosov double iteration on the quasi-Fuchsian space of a closed surface, and the resulting hyperbolization theorem for closed 3-manifolds that fiber over the circle with pseudo-Anosov monodromy.