Kähler groups, R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{R}}$$\end{document}-trees, and holomorphic families of riemann surfaces

Let X be a compact Kähler manifold, and g a fixed genus. Due to the work of Parshin and Arakelov, it is known that there are only a finite number of non isotrivial holomorphic families of Riemann surfaces of genus g⩾2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${g \geqslant 2}$$\end{document} over X. We prove that this number only depends on the fundamental group of X. Our approach uses geometric group theory (limit groups, R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{R}}$$\end{document}-trees, the asymptotic geometry of the mapping class group), and Gromov-Shoen theory. We prove that in many important cases limit groups (in the sense of Sela) associated to infinite sequences of actions of a Kähler group on a Gromov-hyperbolic space are surface groups and we apply this result to monodromy groups acting on complexes of curves.