The renormalized volume and uniformisation of conformal structures

Abstract: We study the renormalized volume of asymptotically hyperbolic Einstein (AHE in short) manifolds $(M,g)$ when the conformal boundary $\pl M$ has dimension $n$ even. Its definition depends on the choice of metric $h_0$ on $\partial M$ in the conformal class at infinity determined by $g$, we denote it by ${\rm Vol}R(M,g;h_0)$. We show that ${\rm Vol}_R(M,g;\cdot)$ is a functional admitting a "Polyakov type" formula in the conformal class $[h_0]$ and we describe the critical points as solutions of some non-linear equation $v_n(h_0)={\rm const}$, satisfied in particular by Einstein metrics. In dimension $n=2$, choosing extremizers in the conformal class amounts to uniformizing the surface, while in dimension $n=4$ this amounts to solving the $\sigma_2$-Yamabe problem. Next, we consider the variation of ${\rm Vol}_R(M,\cdot;\cdot)$ along a curve of AHE metrics $g^t$ with boundary metric $h_0^t$ and we use this to show that, provided conformal classes can be (locally) parametrized by metrics $h$ solving $v_n(h)=\int{\pl M}v_n(h){\rm dvol}_{h}$, the set of ends of AHE manifolds (up to diffeomorphisms isotopic to Identity) can be viewed as a Lagrangian submanifold in the cotangent space to the space $\mc{T}(\pl M)$ of conformal structures on $\pl M$. We obtain as a consequence a higher-dimensional version of McMullen's quasifuchsian reciprocity. We finally show that conformal classes admitting negatively curved Einstein metrics are local minima for the renormalized volume for a warped product type filling.