Weil-Petersson Completion of Teichmueller Spaces and Mapping Class Group Actions

Given a surface of higher genus, we will look at the Weil-Petersson completion of the Teichmuller space of the surface, and will study the isometric action of the mapping class group on it. The main observation is that the geometric characteristics of the setting bear strong similarities to the ones in semi-simple Lie group actions on noncompact symmetric spaces.