Spectral theory for the Weil-Petersson Laplacian on the Riemann moduli space

We study the spectral geometric properties of the scalar Laplace-Beltrami operator associated to the Weil-Petersson metric $g_{\mathrm{W}\mathrm{P}}$ on $\mathcal M_\gamma$,theRiemannmodulispaceofsurfacesofgenus$\gamma > 1$. This space has a singular compactification with respect to $g_{\mathrm{W}\mathrm{P}}$, and this metric has crossing cusp-edge singularities along a finite collection of simple normal crossing divisors. We prove first that the scalar Laplacian is essentially self-adjoint, which then implies that its spectrum is discrete. The second theorem is a Weyl asymptotic formula for the counting function for this spectrum.