Bounds for the number of moves between pants decompositions, and between triangulations

Abstract: Given two pants decompositions of a compact orientable surface $S$, we give an upper bound for their distance in the pants graph that depends logarithmically on their intersection number and polynomially on the Euler characteristic of $S$. As a consequence, we find an upper bound on the volume of the convex core of a maximal cusp (which is a hyperbolic structures on $S \times \mathbb{R}$ where given pants decompositions of the conformal boundary are pinched to annular cusps). As a further application, we give an upper bound for the Weil--Petersson distance between two points in the Teichm\"uller space of $S$ in terms of their corresponding short pants decompositions. Similarly, given two one-vertex triangulations of $S$, we give an upper bound for the number of flips and twist maps needed to convert one triangulation into the other. The proofs rely on using pre-triangulations, train tracks, and an algorithm of Agol, Hass, and Thurston.