Thurston geodesics: no backtracking and active intervals

Abstract

We develop the notion of the active interval for a subsurface along a geodesic in the Thurston metric on Teichmuller space of a surface S. That is, for any geodesic in the Thurston metric and any subsurface R of S, we find an interval of times where the length of the boundary of R is uniformly bounded and the restriction of the geodesic to the subsurface R resembles a geodesic in the Teichmuller space of R. In particular, the set of short curves in R during the active interval represents a reparametrized quasi-geodesic in the curve graph of R (no backtracking) and the amount of movement in the curve graph of R outside of the active interval is uniformly bounded which justifies the name active interval. These intervals provide an analogue of the active intervals introduced by the third author in the setting of Teichmuller space equipped with the Teichmuller metric.