We show that every surface in H^hyp(4) is either a Veech surface or a generic surface, i.e. its GL^+(2,R)-orbit is either a closed or a dense subset of H^hyp(4) . The proof develops new techniques applicable in general to the problem of classifying orbit closures, especially in low genus. Recent results of Eskin-Mirzakhani-Mohammadi, Avila-Eskin-Möller, and the second author are used.
Combined with work of Matheus and the second author, a corollary is that there are at most finitely many non-arithmetic Teichmüller curves (closed orbits of surfaces not covering the torus) in H^hyp(4).
These notes discuss an infinite translation surface, introduced by Chamanara. We review his proof that the Veech group is a non-elementary Fuchsian group of the second kind which is generated by two parabolic elements.
We introduce a class of objects which we call 'affine surfaces'. These provide families of foliations on surfaces whose dynamics we are interested in. We present and analyze a couple of examples, and we define concepts related to these in order to motivate several questions and open problems. In particular we generalise the notion of Veech group to affine surfaces, and we prove a structure result about these Veech groups.
A nice trick for studying the billiard flow in a rational polygon is to unfold the polygon along the trajectories. This gives rise to a translation or half-translation surface tiled by the original polygon, or equivalently an Abelian or quadratic differential. Veech surfaces are a special class of translation surfaces with a large group of affine automorphisms, and interesting dynamical properties. The first examples of Veech surfaces came from rational billiards. We first present the mathematical objects and fix some vocabulary and notation. Then we review known results about Veech surfaces a…
We prove that a ``bouillabaisse'' surface (translation surface which has two transverse parabolic elements) has totally real trace field. As a corollary, non trivial Veech groups which have no parabolic elements do exist. The proof follows Veech's viewpoint on Thurston's construction of pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphisms.
We give a description of asymptotic quadratic growth rates for geodesic segments on covers of Veech surfaces in terms of the modular fiber parameterizing coverings of a fixed Veech surface. To make the paper self contained we derive the necessary asymptotic formulas from the Gutkin-Judge formula. As an application of the method we define and analyze d-symmetric elliptic differentials and their modular fibers F^{sym}_d. For given genus g, g-symmetric elliptic differentials (with fixed base lattice) provide a 2-dimensional family of translation surfaces. We calculate several asymptotic constants…
An Abelian differential gives rise to a flat structure (translation surface) on the underlying Riemann surface. In some directions the directional flow on the flat surface may contain a periodic region that is made up of maximal cylinders filled by parallel geodesics of the same length. The growth rate of the number of such regions counted with weights, as a function of the length, is quadratic with a coefficient, called Siegel-Veech constant, that is shared by almost all translation surfaces in the ambient stratum. We evaluate various Siegel-Veech constants associated to the geometry of confi…
We study the SL(2,R)-infimal lengths of simple closed curves on half-translation surfaces. Our main result is a characterization of Veech surfaces in terms of these lengths. We also revisit the "no small virtual triangles" theorem of Smillie and Weiss and establish the following dichotomy: the virtual triangle area spectrum of a half-translation surface either has a gap above zero or is dense in a neighborhood of zero. These results make use of the auxiliary polygon associated to a curve on a half-translation surface, as introduced by Tang and Webb.
We announce a classification of genus 2 Veech surfaces in the stratum with a single double zero. Furthermore, we classify all completely periodic translation surfaces in genus 2.
For a non-arithmetic Veech surface, it is known that the set points having finite orbit under the Veech group, called the set of periodic points, is finite. However, few examples of these periodic point sets have been computed. In what follows, we compute new examples of periodic point sets for a family of non-hyperelliptic Veech surfaces with unbounded complexity and consider applications to classifying the holomorphic sections of certain surface bundles as well as applications to the study of infinitely generated Veech groups.
In this note we are interested in the dynamics of the linear flow on infinite periodic $\mathbb{Z}^d$-covers of Veech surfaces. An elementary remark allows us to show that the kernel of some natural representations of the Veech group acting on homology is "big". In particular, the same is true for the Veech group of the infinite surface, answering a question of Pascal Hubert. We give some applications to the dynamics on wind-tree models where the underlying compact translation surface is a Veech surface.
We obtain the first complete classification result for algebraically primitive Teichmüller curves in a stratum component in genus greater than 2. Specifically, we show that the Veech 14-gon generates the unique algebraically primitive Teichmüller curve in the hyperelliptic component of the stratum $Ω\mathcal{M}_3(2,2)$.
Dilation surfaces are generalizations of translation surfaces where the geometric structure is modelled on the complex plane up to affine maps whose linear part is real. They are the geometric framework to study suspensions of affine interval exchange maps. However, though the $SL(2,\mathbb{R})$-action is ergodic in connected components of strata of translation surfaces, there may be mutually disjoint $SL(2,\mathbb{R})$-invariant open subsets in components of dilation surfaces. A first distinction is between triangulable and non-triangulable dilation surfaces. For non-triangulable surfaces, th…
Let $S$ be an infinite-type surface and $p\in S$. We show that the Thurston-Veech construction for pseudo-Anosov elements, adapted for infinite-type surfaces, produces infinitely many loxodromic elements for the action of $Mod(S;p)$ on the loop graph $L(S;p)$ that do not leave any finite-type subsurface $S'\subset S$ invariant. Moreover, in the language of Bavard-Walker, Thurston-Veech's construction produces loxodromic elements of any weight. As a consequence of Bavard and Walker's work, any subgroup of $Mod(S;p)$ containing two "Thurston-Veech loxodromics" of different weight has an infinite…
For each stratum of the space of translation surfaces, we introduce an infinite translation surface containing in an appropriate manner a copy of every translation surface of the stratum. Given a translation surface $(X, ω)$ in the stratum, a matrix is in its Veech group $\mathrm{SL}(X,ω)$ if and only if an associated affine automorphism of the infinite surface sends each of a finite set, the ``marked" {\em Voronoi staples}, arising from orientation-paired segments appropriately perpendicular to Voronoi 1-cells, to another pair of orientation-paired ``marked" segments. We prove a result of ind…
We show that each of Veech's original examples of translation surfaces with ``optimal dynamics'' whose trace field is of degree greater than two has non-periodic directions of vanishing SAF-invariant. Furthermore, we give explicit examples of pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphisms whose contracting direction has zero SAF-invariant.
We compute explicitly the absolute contribution of square-tiled surfaces having a single horizontal cylinder to the Masur-Veech volume of any ambient stratum of Abelian differentials. The resulting count is particularly simple and efficient in the large genus asymptotics. Using the recent results of Aggarwal and of Chen-Moeller-Zagier on the long-standing conjecture about the large genus asymptotics of Masur-Veech volumes, we derive that the relative contribution is asymptotically of the order 1/d, where d is the dimension of the stratum. Similarly, we evaluate the contribution of one-cylinder…
We show that the billiard in a regular polygon is weak mixing in almost every invariant surface, except in the trivial cases which give rise to lattices in the plane (triangle, square and hexagon). More generally, we study the problem of prevalence of weak mixing for the directional flow in an arbitrary non-arithmetic Veech surface, and show that the Hausdorff dimension of the set of non-weak mixing directions is not full. We also provide a necessary condition, verified for instance by the Veech surface corresponding to the billiard in the pentagon, for the set of non-weak mixing directions to…
Over the course of studying billiard dynamics, several questions were raised. One of the questions was, which surfaces satisfy the following property (which is called Veech's dichotomy): Any direction is either completely periodic or uniquely ergodic. In an important paper Veech gave a sufficient condition for this dichotomy. He showed that if the stabilizer of a translation surface is a lattice in $SL_2(\R)$, then the surface satisfies Veech's dichotomy. Later, Smillie and Weiss proved that this condition is not necessary. They constructed a translation surface which satisfies Veech's dichoto…
We study the symmetries and geodesics of an infinite translation surface which arises as a limit of translation surfaces built from regular polygons, studied by Veech. We find the affine symmetry group of this infinite translation surface, and we show that this surface admits a deformation into other surfaces with topologically equivalent affine symmetries. The geodesics on these new surfaces are combinatorially the same as the geodesics on the original.
The goal of this note is to study the action of the backward Rauzy-Veech algorithm on the translation surfaces with horizontal saddle connections. In particular, we prove that the orbit of a translation surface via the aforementioned algorithm is $\infty$-complete if and only if the surface does not posses horizontal saddle connections. Moreover, we show that appearance of all saddle connections as sides of the polygonal representations of the translations surface along the backward Rauzy-Veech induction orbit is equivalent to the minimality of the horizontal translation flow.
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 the Kontsevich--Zorich cocycle over an affine invariant orbifold coming from a (cyclic) covering construction inspired by works of Veech and McMullen. In particular, using the terminology in a recent paper of Filip, we show that all cases of Kontsevich--Zorich monodromies of $SU(p,q)$ type are realized by appropriate covering constructions.
Interval exchange maps are related to geodesic flows on translation surfaces; they correspond to the first return maps of the vertical flow on a transverse segment. The Rauzy-Veech induction on the space of interval exchange maps provides a powerful tool to analyze the Teichmueller geodesic flow on the moduli space of Abelian differentials. Several major results have been proved using this renormalization. Danthony and Nogueira introduced in 1988 a natural generalization of interval exchange transformations, namely the linear involutions. These maps are related to general measured foliations o…
We show that Y. Cheung's general $Z$-continued fractions can be adapted to give approximation by saddle connection vectors for any compact translation surface. That is, we show the finiteness of his Minkowski constant for any compact translation surface. Furthermore, we show that for a Veech surface in standard form, each component of any saddle connection vector dominates its conjugates. The saddle connection continued fractions then allow one to recognize certain transcendental directions by their developments.
We review the different notions about translation surfaces which are necessary to understand McMullen's classification of $GL_2^+(\mathbb{R})$-orbit closures in genus two. In Section 2 we recall the different definitions of a translation surface, in increasing order of abstraction, starting with cutting and pasting plane polygons, ending with Abelian differentials. In Section 3 we define the moduli space of translation surfaces and explain its stratification by the type of zeroes of the Abelian differential, the local coordinates given by the relative periods, its relationship with the moduli …
We prove the existence of Veech groups having a critical exponent strictly greater than any elementary Fuchsian group (i.e. $>\frac{1}{2}$) but strictly smaller than any lattice (i.e. $<1$). More precisely, every affine covering of a primitive L-shaped Veech surface $X$ ramified over the singularity and a non-periodic connection point $P\in X$ has such a Veech group. Hubert and Schmidt showed that these Veech groups are infinitely generated and of the first kind. We use a result of Roblin and Tapie which connects the critical exponent of the Veech group of the covering with the Cheeger constan…
We study Lagrange spectra of Veech translation surfaces, which are a generalization of the classical Lagrange spectrum. We show that any such Lagrange spectrum contains a Hall ray. As a main tool, we use the boundary expansion developed by Bowen and Series to code geodesics in the corresponding Teichmüller disk and prove a formula which allows to express large values in the Lagrange spectrum as sums of Cantor sets.
For a Veech surface (x,ω), we characterize subspaces of X^n, invariant under the diagonal action of the affine group of X. We prove that non-arithmetic Veech surfaces have only finitely many invariant subspaces of very particular shape (in any dimension). Among other consequences we find copies of (X,ω) embedded in the moduli-space of translation surfaces. We study illumination problems in (pre-)lattice surfaces. For (X,ω) prelattice we prove the at most countableness of points non-illuminable from any x in X. Applying our results on invariant subspaces we prove the finiteness of these sets wh…
This paper deals with Prym eigenforms which are introduced previously by McMullen. We prove several results on the directional flow on those surfaces, related to complete periodicity (introduced by Calta). More precisely we show that any homological direction is algebraically periodic, and any direction of a regular closed geodesic is a completely periodic direction. As a consequence we draw that the limit set of the Veech group of every Prym eigenform in some Prym loci of genus 3,4, and 5 is either empty, one point, or the full circle at infinity. We also construct new examples of translation…
We describe Veech groups of flat surfaces arising from irrational angled polygonal billiards or irreducible stable abelian differentials. For irrational polygonal billiards, we prove that these groups are non-discrete subgroups of SO(2,R) and we calculate their rank.
There is a natural action of SL(2,R) on the moduli space of translation surfaces, and this yields an action of the unipotent subgroup $U = {\begin{pmatrix} 1 & * 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix}}$. We classify the U-invariant ergodic measures on certain special submanifolds of the moduli space. (Each submanifold is the SL(2,R)-orbit of the set of branched covers of a fixed Veech surface.) For the U-action on these submanifolds, this is an analogue of Ratner's Theorem on unipotent flows. The result yields an asymptotic estimate of the number of periodic trajectories for billiards in a certain family of non-…
First, we apply Thurston's construction of pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms to grid graphs and obtain translation surfaces whose Veech groups are commensurable to $(m,n,\infty)$ triangle groups. These surfaces were first discovered by Bouw and Möller, however our treatment of the surfaces differs. We construct these surfaces by gluing together polygons in two ways. We use these elementary descriptions to compute the Veech groups, resolve primitivity questions, and describe the surfaces algebraically. Second, we show that some $(m,n, \infty)$ triangle groups can not arise as Veech groups. This gene…
We classify the non arithmetic rank one affine invariant orbifolds that do not arise from Veech surfaces in H(3,1) and H^odd(2,2). We also give rigidity results on the isoperiodic leaf of non arithmetic Veech surfaces.
We express the Masur-Veech volume and the area Siegel-Veech constant of the moduli space $\mathcal{Q}_{g,n}$ of genus $g$ meromorphic quadratic differentials with $n$ simple poles as polynomials in the intersection numbers of $ψ$-classes with explicit rational coefficients. The formulae obtained in this article result from lattice point counts involving the Kontsevich volume polynomials that also appear in Mirzakhani's recursion for the Weil-Petersson volumes of the moduli spaces of bordered hyperbolic surfaces with geodesic boundaries. A similar formula for the Masur-Veech volume (though with…
It is well-known that on any Veech surface, the dynamics in any minimal direction is uniquely ergodic. In this paper it is shown that for any genus 2 translation surface which is not a Veech surface there are uncountably many minimal but not uniquely ergodic directions.
We study infinite translation surfaces which are Z-covers of compact translation surfaces. We obtain conditions ensuring that such surfaces have Veech groups which are Fuchsian of the first kind and give a necessary and sufficient condition for recurrence of their straight-line flows. Extending results of Hubert and Schmithusen, we provide examples of infinite non-arithmetic lattice surfaces, as well as surfaces with infinitely generated Veech groups.
We study a family of Teichmüller curves T(n,m) constructed by Bouw and Möller, and previously by Veech and Ward in the cases n=2,3. We simplify the proof that T(n,m) is a Teichmüller curve, avoiding the use Möller's characterization of Teichmüller curves in terms of maximally Higgs bundles. Our key tool is a description of the period mapping of T(n,m) in terms of Schwarz triangle mappings. We prove that T(n,m) is always generated by Hooper's lattice surface with semiregular polygon decomposition. We compute Lyapunov exponents, and determine algebraic primitivity in all cases. We show that freq…
A cutting sequence is a symbolic coding of a linear trajectory on a translation surface corresponding to the sequence of sides hit in a polygonal representation of the surface. We characterize cutting sequences in a regular hexagon with opposite sides identified by translations exploiting the same procedure used by Smillie and Ulcigrai for the regular octagon. In the case of the square, cutting sequences are the well known Sturmian sequences. We remark the differences between the procedure used in the case of the square and the one used in the cases of the regular hexagon and regular octagon. …
We explicitly compute the limiting gap distribution for slopes of saddle connections on the flat surface associated to the regular octagon with opposite sides identified. This is the first such computation where the Veech group of the translation surface has multiple cusps. We also show how to parametrize a Poincaré section for the horocycle flow on $SL(2,\mathbb{R})/SL(X,ω)$ associated to an arbitrary Veech surface $(X, ω)$. As a corollary, we show that the associated gap distribution is piecewise real analytic.
We investigate specific examples of locally-defined real vector-fields on strata of translation surfaces. Integrating SL(2,R)-loci of Veech surfaces along these vector-fields yield interesting new examples of horocyle-invariant ergodic measures. These measures are supported on closed immersed manifolds with boundary that approach the boundary of strata in a novel way.
A holomorphic 1-form on a compact Riemann surface S naturally defines a flat metric on S with cone-type singularities. We present the following surprising phenomenon: having found a geodesic segment (saddle connection) joining a pair of conical points one can find with a nonzero probability another saddle connection on S having the same direction and the same length as the initial one. The similar phenomenon is valid for the families of parallel closed geodesics. We give a complete description of all possible configurations of parallel saddle connections (and of families of parallel closed geo…
An interesting result of Veech more than 50 years ago is a parity, or mod $2$, version of the Kronecker--Weyl equidistribution theorem concerning the irrational rotation sequence $\{qα\}$, $q=0,1,2,3,\ldots.$ If $α$ is badly approximable and $b\in(0,1)$ satisfies $b\ne\{mα\}$ for any $m\in\mathbb{Z}$, then the parity of cardinalities of the sets $\{1\le q\le N:\{qα\}\in[0,b)\}$ as $N\to\infty$ is evenly distributed. We first answer a question of Veech and establish a stronger form of the mod $n$ analog of his result (Theorem 3.1). Furthermore, for irrational $α$ and $b=\{mα\}$ for some $m\in\m…
We show that in any non-arithmetic rank 1 orbit closure of translation surfaces, there are only finitely many Teichmüller curves. We also show that in any non-arithmetic rank 1 orbit closure, any completely parabolic surface is Veech.
We consider a symbolic coding for geodesics on the family of Veech surfaces (translation surfaces rich with affine symmetries) recently discovered by Bouw and Moeller. These surfaces, as noticed by Hooper, can be realized by cutting and pasting a collection of semi-regular polygons. We characterize the set of symbolic sequences (cutting sequences) that arise by coding linear trajectories by the sequence of polygon sides crossed. We provide a full characterization for the closure of the set of cutting sequences, in the spirit of the classical characterization of Sturmian sequences and the recen…
This text is an expanded version of the lecture notes of a minicourse (with the same title of this text) delivered by the authors in the Bedlewo school "Modern Dynamics and its Interaction with Analysis, Geometry and Number Theory" (from 4 to 16 July, 2011). In the first part of this text, i.e., from Sections 1 to 5, we discuss the Teichmüller and moduli space of translation surfaces, the Teichmüller flow and the SL(2,R)-action on these moduli spaces and the Kontsevich-Zorich cocycle over the Teichmüller geodesic flow. We sketch two applications of the ergodic properties of the Teichmüller flo…
