For g>2 we study the cohomology classes in the closure of a stratum of abelian differentials defined by the boundary strata of codimension one. As an application, we find an explicit stratification of the spin moduli space for an odd spin structure consisting of g-1 strata D_j of codimension j-1 such that D_j does not contain a complete subvariety for all j. We also recover some results of Koroktin and Zograf and of Chen using a unified topological approach.
This paper describes connected components of the strata of holomorphic abelian differentials on marked Riemann surfaces with prescribed degrees of zeros. Unlike the case for unmarked Riemann surfaces, we find there can be many connected components, distinguished by roots of the cotangent bundle of the surface. In the course of our investigation we also characterize the images of the fundamental groups of strata inside of the mapping class group. The main techniques of proof are mod r winding numbers and a mapping class group-theoretic analogue of the Euclidean algorithm.
We study the decomposition of a stratum $\mathcal H(κ)$ of abelian differentials into regions of differentials that share a common $L^\infty$-Delaunay triangulation. In particular, we classify the infinitely many adjacencies between these isodelaunay regions, a phenomenon whose observation is attributed to Filip in work of Frankel. This classification allows us to construct a finite simplicial complex with the same homotopy type as $\mathcal H(κ)$, and we outline a method for its computation. We also require a stronger equivariant version of the traditional Nerve Lemma than currently exists in…
The motivation of this work is to define cohomology classes in the space of knots that are both easy to find and to evaluate, by reducing the problem to simple linear algebra. We achieve this goal by defining a combinatorial graded cochain complex, such that the elements of an explicit submodule in the cohomology define algebraic intersections with some "geometrically simple" strata in the space of knots. Such strata are endowed with explicit co-orientations, that are canonical in some sense. The combinatorial tools involved are natural generalisations (degeneracies) of usual methods using arr…
We compute a closed formula for the class of the closure of the locus of curves in $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_g$ that admit an abelian differential of signature $κ=(k_1,...,k_{g-2})$.
We state conjectures on the asymptotic behavior of the volumes of moduli spaces of Abelian differentials and their Siegel-Veech constants as genus tends to infinity. We provide certain numerical evidence, describe recent advances and the state of the art towards proving these conjectures.
This paper focuses on the interplay between the intersection theory and the Teichmueller dynamics on the moduli space of curves. As applications, we study the cycle class of strata of the Hodge bundle, present an algebraic method to calculate the class of the divisor parameterizing abelian differentials with a non-simple zero, and verify a number of extremal effective divisors on the moduli space of pointed curves in low genus.
The volumes of strata of Abelian or quadratic differentials play an important role in the study of dynamics on flat surfaces, related to dynamics in polygonal billiards. This article reviews all known ways to compute volumes in the quadratic case and provides explicit values of volumes of the strata of meromorphic quadratic differentials with at most simple poles in all low dimensions.
Moduli spaces of Abelian and quadratic differentials are stratified by multiplicities of zeroes; connected components of the strata correspond to ergodic components of the Teichmuller geodesic flow. It is known that the strata are not necessarily connected; the connected components were recently classified by M. Kontsevich and the author and by E. Lanneau. The strata can be also viewed as families of flat metrics with conical singularities and with Z/2Z-holonomy. For every connected component of each stratum of Abelian and quadratic differentials we construct an explicit representative which i…
For $g \ge 5$, we give a complete classification of the connected components of strata of abelian differentials over Teichmüller space, establishing an analogue of Kontsevich and Zorich's classification of their components over moduli space. Building off of work of the first author (arXiv:1901.05482), we find that the non-hyperelliptic components are classified by an invariant known as an $r$-spin structure. This is accomplished by computing a certain monodromy group valued in the mapping class group. To do this, we determine explicit finite generating sets for all $r$-spin stabilizer subgroup…
Let S be a closed topological surface. Haupt's theorem provides necessary and sufficient conditions for a complex-valued character of the first integer homology group of S to be realized by integration against a complex-valued 1-form that is holomorphic with respect to some complex structure on S. We prove a refinement of this theorem that takes into account the divisor data of the 1-form.
This paper investigates the relationship between strata of abelian differentials and various mapping class groups afforded by means of the topological monodromy representation. Building off of prior work of the authors, we show that the fundamental group of a stratum surjects onto the subgroup of the mapping class group which preserves a fixed framing of the underlying Riemann surface, thereby giving a complete characterization of the monodromy group. In the course of our proof we also show that these "framed mapping class groups" are finitely generated (even though they are of infinite index)…
We describe the closure of the strata of abelian differentials with prescribed type of zeros and poles, in the projectivized Hodge bundle over the Deligne-Mumford moduli space of stable curves with marked points. We provide an explicit characterization of pointed stable differentials in the boundary of the closure, both a complex analytic proof and a flat geometric proof for smoothing the boundary differentials, and numerous examples. The main new ingredient in our description is a global residue condition arising from a full order on the dual graph of a stable curve.
The main goal of this work is to construct and study a reasonable compactification of the strata of the moduli space of Abelian differentials. This allows us to compute the Kodaira dimension of some strata of the moduli space of Abelian differentials. The main ingredients to study the compactifications of the strata are a version of the plumbing cylinder construction for differential forms and an extension of the parity of the connected components of the strata to the differentials on curves of compact type. We study in detail the compactifications of the hyperelliptic minimal strata and of th…
The boundary of the multi-scale differential compactification of strata of abelian differentials admits an explicit combinatorial description. However, even for low-dimensional strata, the complexity of the boundary requires use of a computer. We give a description of the algorithms implemented in the SageMath package diffstrata to enumerate the boundary components and perform intersection theory on this space. In particular, the package can compute the Euler characteristic of strata using the methods developed by the same authors in [CMZ20].
In this paper, we study the translation surfaces corresponding to meromorphic differentials on compact Riemann surfaces. We compute the number of connected components of the corresponding strata of the moduli space. We show that in genus greater than or equal to two, one has up to three components with a similar description as the one of Kontsevich and Zorich for the moduli space of Abelian differentials. In genus one, one can obtain an arbitrarily large number of connected components that are easily distinghished by a simple topological invariant.
We prove that the nonvarying strata of abelian and quadratic differentials in [CM1, CM2] have trivial tautological rings and are affine varieties. We also prove that strata of $k$-differentials of infinite area are affine varieties for all $k$. Vanishing of homology in degree higher than the complex dimension follows as a consequence for these affine strata. Moreover we prove that the stratification of the Hodge bundle for abelian and quadratic differentials of finite area is extremal in the sense that merging two zeros in each stratum leads to an extremal effective divisor in the boundary. A …
The object of this paper is to study GL(2,R) orbit closures in hyperelliptic components of strata of abelian differentials. The main result is that all higher rank affine invariant submanifolds in hyperelliptic components are branched covering constructions, i.e. every translation surface in the affine invariant submanifold covers a translation surface in a lower genus hyperelliptic component of a stratum of abelian differentials. This result implies finiteness of algebraically primitive Teichmuller curves in all hyperelliptic components for genus greater than two. A classification of all GL(2…
In this paper we consider the large genus asymptotics for Masur-Veech volumes of arbitrary strata of Abelian differentials. Through a combinatorial analysis of an algorithm proposed in 2002 by Eskin-Okounkov to exactly evaluate these quantities, we show that the volume $ν_1 \big( \mathcal{H}_1 (m) \big)$ of a stratum indexed by a partition $m = (m_1, m_2, \ldots , m_n)$ is $\big( 4 + o(1) \big) \prod_{i = 1}^n (m_i + 1)^{-1}$ as $2g - 2 = \sum_{i = 1}^n m_i$ tends to $\infty$. This confirms a prediction of Eskin-Zorich and generalizes some of the recent results of Chen-Moeller-Zagier and Sauva…
The orbit closure of the unfolding of every rational right and isosceles triangle is computed and the asymptotic number of periodic billiard trajectories in these triangles is deduced. This follows by classifying all orbit closures of rank at least two in hyperelliptic components of strata of Abelian and quadratic differentials. Additionally, given a fixed set of angles, the orbit closure of the unfolding of all unit area rational parallelograms, isosceles trapezoids, and right trapezoids outside of a discrete set is determined.
Using stable log maps, we introduce log twisted differentials extending the notion of abelian differentials to the Deligne-Mumford boundary of stable curves. The moduli stack of log twisted differentials provides a compactification of the strata of abelian differentials. The open strata can have up to three connected components, due to spin and hyperelliptic structures. We prove that the spin parity can be distinguished on the boundary of the log compactification. Moreover, combining the techniques of log geometry and admissible covers, we introduce log twisted hyperelliptic differentials, and…
We construct a spectral sequence associated to a stratified space, which computes the compactly supported cohomology groups of an open stratum in terms of the compactly supported cohomology groups of closed strata and the reduced cohomology groups of the poset of strata. Several familiar spectral sequences arise as special cases. The construction is sheaf-theoretic and works both for topological spaces and for the étale cohomology of algebraic varieties. As an application we prove a very general representation stability theorem for configuration spaces of points.
We compute many new classes of effective divisors in $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ coming from the strata of abelian differentials and efficiently reproduce many known results obtained by alternate methods. Our method utilises maps between moduli spaces and the degeneration of abelian differentials.
We study the transcendence of periods of abelian differentials, both at the arithmetic and functional level, from the point of view of the natural bi-algebraic structure on strata of abelian differentials. We characterise geometrically the arithmetic points, study their distribution, and prove that in many cases the bi-algebraic curves are the linear ones.
In two fundamental classical papers, Masur and Veech have independently proved that the Teichmueller geodesic flow acts ergodically on each connected component of each stratum of the moduli space of quadratic differentials. It is therefore interesting to have a classification of the ergodic components. Veech has proved that these strata are not necessarily connected. In a recent work, Kontsevich and Zorich have completely classified the components in the particular case where the quadratic differentials are given by the global square of Abelian differentials. Here we are interested in the comp…
We prove that square-tiled surfaces having fixed combinatorics of horizontal cylinder decomposition and tiled with smaller and smaller squares become asymptotically equidistributed in any ambient linear $GL(\mathbb R)$-invariant suborbifold defined over $\mathbb Q$ in the moduli space of Abelian differentials. Moreover, we prove that the combinatorics of the horizontal and of the vertical decompositions are asymptotically uncorrelated. As a consequence, we prove the existence of an asymptotic distribution for the combinatorics of a "random" interval exchange transformation with integer lengths…
We show that for many strata of Abelian differentials in low genus the sum of Lyapunov exponents for the Teichmueller geodesic flow is the same for all Teichmueller curves in that stratum, hence equal to the sum of Lyapunov exponents for the whole stratum. This behavior is due to the disjointness property of Teichmueller curves with various geometrically defined divisors on moduli spaces of curves.
The rational cohomology ring of A_3, the moduli space of abelian 3-folds is computed. This is isomorphic to the the rational cohomology ring of the group Sp_3(Z) of 6x6 integral symplectic matrices. The main ingredients in the computation are (1) Looijenga's computation of the rational cohomology ring of M_3, the moduli space of smooth projective curves of genus 3, and (2) the stratified Morse theory of Goresky and MacPherson, which we use to compute the homology of the jacobian locus (in the rank 3 Siegel upper half plane), or equivalently of the extended Torelli group in genus 3. In the revi…
