We investigate typical behavior of geodesics on a closed flat surface $S$ of genus $g\geq 2$. We compare the length quotient of long arcs in the same homotopy class with fixed endpoints for the flat and the hyperbolic metric in the same conformal class. This quotient is asymptotically constant $F$ a.e. We show that $F$ is bounded from below by the inverse of the volume entropy $e(S)$. Moreover, we construct a geodesic flow together with a measure on $S$ which is induced by the Hausdorff measure of the Gromov boundary of the universal cover. Denote by $e(S)$ the volume entropy of $S$ and let $c$ be a compact geodesic arc which connects singularities. We show that a typical geodesic passes through $c$ with frequency that is comparable to $\exp(-e(S)l(c))$. Thus a typical bi-infinite geodesic contains infinitely many singularities, and each geodesic between singularities $c$ appears infinitely often with a frequency proportional to $\exp(-e(S)l(c))$.
Let $S$ be a surface of nonpositive curvature of genus bigger than 1 (i.e. not the torus). We prove that any flat strip in the surface is in fact a flat cylinder. Moreover we prove that the number of homotopy classes of such flat cylinders is bounded.
Consider a compact surface of genus $\geq 2$ equipped with a metric that is flat everywhere except at finitely many cone points with angles greater than $2π$. Following the technique in the work of Burns, Climenhaga, Fisher, and Thompson, we prove that sufficiently regular potential functions have unique equilibrium states if the singular set does not support the full pressure. Moreover, we show that the pressure gap holds for any potential which is locally constant on a neighborhood of the singular set. Finally, we establish that the corresponding equilibrium states have the $K$-property, and…
The geodesic flow of the flat metric on a torus is minimizing the polynomial entropy among all geodesic flows on this torus. We prove here that this properties characterises the flat metric on the two torus.
Let $M$ be a smooth compact surface of nonpositive curvature, with genus $\geq 2$. We prove the ergodicity of the geodesic flow on the unit tangent bundle of $M$ with respect to the Liouville measure under the condition that the set of points with negative curvature on $M$ has finitely many connected components. Under the same condition, we prove that a non closed "flat" geodesic doesn't exist, and moreover, there are at most finitely many flat strips, and at most finitely many isolated closed "flat" geodesics.
For fixed g and T we show that finiteness of the set of affine equivalence classes of flat surfaces of genus g whose Veech groups contain a cusp of hyperbolic co-area less than T. We obtain new restrictions on Veech groups: we show that any non-elementary Veech group can appear only finitely many times in a fixed stratum, that any non-elementary Veech group is of finite index in its normalizer, and that the quotient of the upper half plane by a non-lattice Veech group contains arbitrarily large embedded disks. These are proved using the finiteness of the set of affine equivalence classes of fl…
We describe a family of arithmetic cross-sections for geodesic flow on compact surfaces of constant negative curvature based on the study of generalized Bowen-Series boundary maps associated to cocompact torsion-free Fuchsian groups and their natural extensions, introduced in Katok-Ugarcovici's 2017 paper. If the boundary map satisfies the short cycle property, i.e., the forward orbits at each discontinuity point coincide after one step, the natural extension map has a global attractor with finite rectangular structure, and the associated arithmetic cross-section is parametrized by the attract…
In this note we study the limiting behaviour of real valued functions on hyperbolic groups as we travel along typical geodesic rays in the Gromov boundary of the group. Our results apply to group homomorphisms, certain quasimorphisms and to the displacement functions associated to convex cocompact group actions on CAT$(-1)$ metric spaces.
We study homologically maximizing timelike geodesics in conformally flat tori. A causal geodesic $γ$ in such a torus is said to be homologically maximizing if one (hence every) lift of $γ$ to the universal cover is arclength maximizing. First we prove a compactness result for homologically maximizing timelike geodesics. This yields the Lipschitz continuity of the time separation of the universal cover on strict sub-cones of the cone of future pointing vectors. Then we introduce the stable time separation $\mathfrak{l}$. As an application we prove relations between the concavity properties of $…
This short survey illustrates the ideas of Teichmuller dynamics. As a model application we consider the asymptotic topology of generic geodesics on a "flat" surface and count closed geodesics and saddle connections. This survey is based on the joint papers with A.Eskin and H.Masur and with M.Kontsevich.
We show that given any Liouville direction and flat Finsler torus, one can make a $C^{\infty}$-small perturbation on an arbitrarily small disc to get a nondense geodesic in the given direction.
As we have proved in [L], the geodesic flows associated with the flat metrics on T^2 minimize the polynomial entropy. In this paper, we show that, among the geodesic flows that are Bott integrable and dynamically coherent, the geodesic flows associated to flat metrics are local strict minima for the polynomial entropy. To this aim, we prove a graph property for invariant Lagrangian tori in near-integrable systems.
Consider a component Q of a stratum in the moduli space of area one abelian differentials on a surface of genus g. Call a property P for periodic orbits of the Teichmueller flow typical if the growth rate of orbits with this property is maximal. Typical are: The logarithms of the eigenvalues of the symplectic matrix defined by the orbit are arbitrarily close to the Lyapunov exponents of Q, and its trace field is a totally real splitting field of degree g over Q. If g>2 then periodic orbits whose SL(2,R)-orbit closure equals Q are typical. We also show that Q contains only finitely many algebra…
In this paper we describe the topological behavior of the geodesic flow for a class of closed 3-manifolds realized as quotients of nonstrictly convex Hilbert geometries, constructed and described explicitly by Benoist. These manifolds are Finsler geometries which have isometrically embedded flats, but also some hyperbolicity and an explicit geometric structure. We prove the geodesic flow of the quotient is topologically mixing and satisfies a nonuniform Anosov closing lemma, with applications to entropy and orbit counting. We also prove entropy-expansiveness for the geodesic flow of any compac…
We relate a number of results in the theory of flat surfaces to BPS spectra of a class of 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric quantum field theories arising from M5 branes wrapped on Riemann surfaces -- $A_1$ class S theories. In particular, we apply classic results of Eskin and Masur, which determine the asymptotic growth of geodesic counts at large length on flat surfaces, as well as more recent progress in the mathematics literature, to determine the large mass asymptotics of the BPS spectra of a wide class of such theories at generic points in the Coulomb branch.
We establish the background for the study of geodesics on noncompact polygonal surfaces. For illustration, we study the recurrence of geodesics on $Z$-periodic polygonal surfaces. We prove, in particular, that almost all geodesics on a topologically typical $Z$-periodic surface with boundary are recurrent.
Any smooth surface in R^3 may be flattened along the z-axis, and the flattened surface becomes close to a billiard table in R^2 . We show that, under some hypotheses, the geodesic flow of this surface converges locally uniformly to the billiard flow. Moreover, if the billiard is dispersive and has finite horizon, then the geodesic flow of the corresponding surface is Anosov. We apply this result to the theory of mechanical linkages and their dynamics: we provide a new example of a simple linkage whose physical behavior is Anosov. For the first time, the edge lengths of the mechanism are given …
Let $X$ be a proper, geodesically complete CAT(0) space under a proper, non-elementary, isometric action by a group $Γ$ with a rank one element. We construct a generalized Bowen-Margulis measure on the space of unit-speed parametrized geodesics of $X$ modulo the $Γ$-action. Although the construction of Bowen-Margulis measures for rank one nonpositively curved manifolds and for CAT(-1) spaces is well-known, the construction for CAT(0) spaces hinges on establishing a new structural result of independent interest: Almost no geodesic, under the Bowen-Margulis measure, bounds a flat strip of any po…
We prove that flow of a generic geodesic on a flat surface with finite holonomy group is ergodic. We use this result to prove that flows of generic billiards on certain flat surfaces with boundary are also ergodic.
We study the generic invariant probability measures for the geodesic flow on connected complete nonpositively curved manifolds. Under a mild technical assumption, we prove that ergodicity is a generic property in the set of probability measures defined on the unit tangent bundle of the manifold and supported by trajectories not bounding a flat strip. This is done by showing that Dirac measures on periodic orbits are dense in that set. In the case of a compact surface, we get the following sharp result: ergod- icity is a generic property in the space of all invariant measures defined on the uni…
Let $X$ be a proper, geodesically complete CAT(0) space which satisfies Chen and Eberlein's duality condition. We show the existence of a strong notion of rank for $X$ by proving that the parallel sets $P_v$ of geodesics $v$ in $X$ are generically flat. More precisely, let $GX$ be the space of parametrized unit-speed geodesics in $X$. There is a unique $k$ and a dense $G_δ$ set $\mathcal{A}$ in $GX$ such that $P_v$ is isometric to flat Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^k$, for all $v \in \mathcal{A}$. It follows that $\mathbb{R}^k$ isometrically embeds in $P_v$ for every $v \in GX$.
The Cucker-Smale(CS) model is a velocity alignment model, and this model also has been generalized on general manifolds. We modify the CS model on manifolds to get rid of a-priori condition on particles' positions and conditions on communication functions. Since the shortest geodesic is used to define an interaction between two particles, if there exist two or more than two shortest geodesics, then the system is not well-defined. In this paper, instead of using the shortest geodesic to define an interaction between two particles, we use all geodesics to define an interaction. From this assumpt…
We consider the Weil--Petersson (WP) metric on the modular surface. We lift WP geodesics to the universal cover of the modular surface and analyse geometric properties of the lifts as paths in the hyperbolic metric on the universal cover. For any pair of distinct points in the thick part of the universal cover, we prove that the WP and hyperbolic geodesic segments that connect the pair, fellow-travel in the thick part and all deviations between these segments arise during cusp excursions. Furthermore, we give a quantitative analysis of the deviation during an excursion. We leverage the fellow …
This note presents some of the results obtained in arXiv:2207.05410 and it has beenthe object of a talk of the second author during the Journées "Équations auxDérivées Partielles" (Obernai, june 2022). We study properties of geodesics that are orthogonal to two convex subsets of the flat torus. We discuss meromorphic properties of a geometric Epstein zeta function associated to the set of lengths of such orthogeodesics. We also define the associated length distribution and discuss singularities of its Fourier transform. Our analysis relies on a fine study of the dynamical correlation function …
