Intersection numbers between horizontal foliations of quadratic differentials

Abstract

We establish that the intersection number between the horizontal foliations of any two finite-area holomorphic quadratic differentials on an arbitrary Riemann surface is finite. Our main result shows that the intersection number is jointly continuous in the $L^1$-norm on the quadratic differentials. A corollary is that the Jenkins-Strebel differentials are not dense in the space of all finite-area holomorphic quadratic differentials when the infinite Riemann surface is not parabolic.