Given a hyperbolic surface with geodesic boundary S, the lengths of a maximal system of disjoint simple geodesic arcs on S that start and end at @S perpendicularly are coordinates on the Teichm¨uller space T (S). We express the Weil-Petersson Poisson structure of T (S) in this system of coordinates, and we prove that it limits pointwise to the piecewise-linear Poisson structure defined by Kontsevich on the arc complex of S. At the same time, we obtain a formula for the first-order variation of the distance between two closed geodesics under Fenchel-Nielsen deformation.

We prove a structure theorem for compact aspherical Lorentz manifolds with abundant local symmetry. If M is a compact, aspherical, real-analytic, complete Lorentz manifold such that the isometry group of the universal cover has semisimple identity component, then the local isometry orbits in M are roughly ¯bers of a¯ber bundle. A corollary is that if M has an open, dense, locally homogeneous subset, then M is locally homogeneous.

In this paper, we introduce a new notion for lower bounds of Ricci curvature on Alexandrov spaces, and extend Cheeger–Gromoll splitting theorem and Cheng’s maximal diameter theorem to Alexandrov spaces under this Ricci curvature condition.