The deformation theory of nonorientable surfaces deals with the problem of studying parameter spaces for the different dianalytic structures that a surface can have. It is an extension of the classical theory of Teichmüller spaces of Riemann surfaces, and as such, it is quite rich. In this paper we study some basic properties of the Teichmüller spaces of non-orientable surfaces, whose parallels in the orientable situation are well known. More precisely, we prove an uniformization theorem, similar to the case of Riemann surfaces, which shows that a non-orientable compact surface can be represented as the quotient of a simply connected domain of the Riemann sphere, by a discrete group of Möbius and anti-Möbius transformation (mappings whose conjugates are Mobius transformations). This uniformization result allows us to give explicit examples of Teichmüller spaces of non-orientable surfaces, as subsets of deformation spaces of orientable surfaces. We also prove two isomorphism theorems: in the first place, we show that the Teichmüller spaces of surfaces of different topological type are not, in general, equivalent. We then show that, if the topological type is preserved, but the signature changes, then the deformations spaces are isomorphic. These are generalizations of the Patterson and Bers-Greenberg theorems for Teichmüller spaces of Riemann surfaces, respectively.
Automorphisms of curve complexes on nonorientable surfaces
