LARGE-SCALE RIGIDITY PROPERTIES OF THE MAPPING CLASS GROUPS

We study the coarse geometry of the mapping class group of a compact orientable surface. We show that, apart from a few low-complexity cases, any quasi-isometric embedding of a mapping class group into itself agrees up to bounded distance with a left multiplication. In particular, such a map is a quasi-isometry. This is a strengthening of the result of Hamenstadt and of Behrstock, Kleiner, Minsky and Mosher that the mapping class groups are quasi-isometrically rigid. In the course of proving this, we also develop the general theory of coarse median spaces and median metric spaces with a view to applications to Teichmuller space, and related spaces.