An oblivious point on a translation surface is a point with no closed geodesic passing through it. Nguyen, Pan, and Su (2017) showed that there are at most finitely many oblivious points on any given translation surface and constructed a family of surfaces with exactly one oblivious point. We construct new families of translation surfaces with arbitrarily many oblivious points and prove that there is a translation surface in every genus $\ge3$ with an oblivious point.
We prove some estimates of the volumes of the sets of translation surfaces of unit area having several independent small saddle connections in a rank one affine submanifold.
We characterize subgroups of the mapping class group that stabilize a Teichmueller disk in terms of ellipses and strips that are immersed in the associated translation surface. In particular, we show that the space of immersed ellipses/strips that meet at least three cone points is naturally a (non-manifold) 2-dimensional cell complex. The topology of this complex and the geometry of its 0-cells determine the translation surface and its affine diffeomorphism group (up to the kernel of the differential).
The natural automorphism group of a translation surface is its group of translations. For finite translation surfaces of genus g > 1 the order of this group is naturally bounded in terms of g due to a Riemann-Hurwitz formula argument. In analogy with classical Hurwitz surfaces, we call surfaces which achieve the maximal bound Hurwitz translation surfaces. We study for which g there exist Hurwitz translation surfaces of genus g.
A translation structure equips a Riemann surface with a singular flat metric. Not much is known about the shape of a random translation surface. We compute an upper bound on the expected value of the covering radius of a translation surface in any stratum H_1(kappa). The covering radius of a translation surface is the largest radius of an immersed disk. In the case of the stratum H_1(2g-2) of translation surfaces of genus g with one singularity, the covering radius is comparable to the diameter. We show that the expected covering radius of a surface is bounded above by a uniform multiple of ((…
We consider various metric and analytic notions of finiteness on translation surfaces. The Veech group of a surface is discrete if the surface has finite area or is totally bounded.
The Gauss-Bonnet formula for classical translation surfaces relates the cone angle of the singularities (geometry) to the genus of the surface (topology). When considering more general translation surfaces, we observe so-called wild singularities for which the notion of cone angle is not applicable any more. We study whether there still exist relations between the geometry and the topology for translation surfaces with wild singularities. By considering short saddle connections, we determine under which conditions the existence of a wild singularity implies infinite genus. We apply this to sho…
Translation surfaces with poles correspond to meromorphic differentials on compact Riemann surfaces. They appear in compactifications of strata of the moduli space of Abelian differentials and in the study of stability conditions. Such structures have different geometrical and dynamical properties than usual translation surfaces. In particular, they always have infinite area and can have a finite number of saddle connections. We provide a combinatorial characterization of the strata for which there can be an infinite number of saddle connections and give lower and upper bounds for the number o…
To every half-translation surface, we associate a saddle connection graph, which is a subgraph of the arc graph. We prove that every isomorphism between two saddle connection graphs is induced by an affine homeomorphism between the underlying half-translation surfaces. We also investigate the automorphism group of the saddle connection graph, and the corresponding quotient graph.
We show that all GL(2,R) equivariant point markings over orbit closures of translation surfaces arise from branched covering constructions and periodic points, completely classify such point markings over strata of quadratic differentials, and give applications to the finite blocking problem.
In this paper, we are interested in flat metric structures with conical singularities on surfaces which are obtained by deforming translation surface structures. The moduli space of such flat metric structures can be viewed as some deformation of the moduli space of translation surfaces. Using geodesic triangulations, we define a volume form on this moduli space, and show that, in the well-known cases, this volume form agrees with usual ones, up to a multiplicative constant.
Thanks to a theorem of Brock on comparison of Weil-Petersson translation distances and hyperbolic volumes of mapping tori for pseudo-Anosovs, we prove that the entropy of a surface automorphism in general has linear bounds in terms of Gromov norm of its mapping torus from below and in bounded geometry case from above. We also prove that the Weil-Petersson translation distance does the same from both sides in general. The proofs are in fact immediately derived from the theorem of Brock together with some other strong theorems and small observations.
Finite translation surfaces can be classified by the order of their singularities. When generalizing to infinite translation surfaces, however, the notion of order of a singularity is no longer well-defined and has to be replaced by new concepts. This article discusses the nature of two such concepts, recently introduced by Bowman and Valdez: linear approaches and rotational components. We show that there is a large flexibility in the spaces of rotational components and even more in the spaces of linear approaches. In particular, we prove that every finite topological space arises as space of …
A translation structure on a surface is an atlas of charts to the plane so that the transition functions are translations. We allow our surfaces to be non-compact and infinite genus. We endow the space of all pointed surfaces equipped with a translation structure with a topology, which we call the immersive topology because it is related to the manner in which disks can be immersed into such a surface. We prove that a number of operations typically done to translation surfaces are continuous with respect to the topology. We show that the topology is Hausdorff, and that the collection of surfac…
We consider flow directions on the translation surfaces formed from double $(2n+1)$-gons, and give a sufficient condition in terms of a natural gcd algorithm for a direction to be hyperbolic in the sense that it is the fixed direction for some hyperbolic element of the Veech group of the surface. In particular, we give explicit points in the holonomy field of the double heptagon translation surface which are not so-called connection points. Among these are the central points of the heptagons, giving a negative answer to a question by P.Hubert and T.Schmidt.
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.
Realizing groups as symmetries of infinite translation surfaces
Universidad Nacional de Colombia（哥伦比亚国立大学）；Heidelberg University（海德堡大学）；Bowdoin College（鲍登学院）；Centro de Ciencias Matemáticas, UNAM（墨西哥国立自治大学数学科学中心）；Universität des Saarlandes（萨尔兰大学）
We show that on any translation surface, if a regular point is contained in a simple closed geodesic, then it is contained in infinitely many simple closed geodesics, whose directions are dense in the unit circle. Moreover, the set of points that are not contained in any simple closed geodesic is finite. We also construct explicit examples showing that such points exist. For a surface in any hyperelliptic component, we show that this finite exceptional set is actually empty. The proofs of our results use Apisa's classifications of periodic points and of $\GL(2,\R)$ orbit closures in hyperellip…
We prove that the dilatation of any pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism on a translation surface that belong to a hyperelliptic component is bounded from below uniformly by sqrt{2}. This is in contrast to Penner's asymptotic. Penner proved that the logarithm of the least dilatation of any pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism on a surface of genus g tends to zero at rate 1/g (as g goes to infinity). We also show that our uniform lower bound sqrt{2} is sharp. More precisely the least dilatation of a pseudo-Anosov on a genus g>1 translation surface in a hyperelliptic component belongs to the interval ]sqrt{2},sqr…
We study Veech groups of covering surfaces of primitive translation surfaces. Therefore we define congruence subgroups in Veech groups of primitive translation surfaces using their action on the homology with entries in $\mathbb{Z}/a\mathbb{Z}$. We introduce a congruence level definition and a property of a primitive translation surface which we call property $(\star)$. It guarantees that partition stabilising congruence subgroups of this level occur as Veech group of a translation covering. Each primitive surface with exactly one singular point has property $(\star)$ in every level. We additi…
This paper studies Heegaard splittings of surface bundles via the curve complex of the fibre. The translation distance of the monodromy is the smallest distance it moves any vertex of the curve complex. We prove that the translation distance is bounded above in terms of the genus of any strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting. As a consequence, if a splitting surface has small genus compared to the translation distance of the monodromy, the splitting is standard.
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…
In this paper, we compare two definitions of Rauzy classes. The first one was introduced by Rauzy and was in particular used by Veech to prove the ergodicity of the Teichmüller flow. The second one is more recent and uses a "labeling" of the underlying intervals, and was used in the proof of some recent major results about the Teichmüller flow. The Rauzy diagrams obtained from the second definition are coverings of the initial ones. In this paper, we give a formula that gives the degree of this covering. This formula is related to moduli spaces of "framed" translation surfaces, which correspon…
For a translation surface, we define the systole to be the length of the shortest saddle connection. We give a characterization of the maxima of the systole function on a stratum, and give a family of examples providing local but nonglobal maxima on each stratum of genus at least three. We further study the relation between (locally) maximal values of the systole function and the number of shortest saddle connections.
We study the one parameter family of genus 2 Riemann surfaces defined by the orbit of the L-shaped translation surface tiled by three squares under the Teichmüller geodesic flow. These surfaces are real algebraic curves with three real components. We are interested in describing these surfaces by their period matrices. We show that the only Riemann surface in that family admitting a non-hyperelliptic automorphism comes from the 3-square-tiled translation surface itself. This makes the computation of an exact expression for period matrices of other Riemann surfaces in that family by the classic…
We derive results on the distribution of directions of saddle connections on translation surfaces using only the Birkhoff ergodic theorem applied to the geodesic flow on the moduli space of translation surfaces. Our techniques, together with an approximation argument, also give an alternative proof of a weak version of a classical theorem in multi-dimensional Diophantine approximation due to W. Schmidt \cite{SchmidtMetrical, SchmidtMetrical2}. The approximation argument allows us to deduce the Birkhoff genericity of almost all lattices in a certain submanifold of the space of unimodular lattic…
Translation surfaces can be defined in an elementary way via polygons, and arise naturally in in the study of various basic dynamical systems. They can also be defined as Abelian differentials on Riemann surfaces, and have moduli spaces called strata that are related to the moduli space of Riemann surfaces. There is a GL(2,R) action on each stratum, and to solve most problems about a translation surface one must first know the closure of its orbit under this action. Furthermore, these orbit closures are of fundamental interest in their own right, and are now known to be algebraic varieties tha…
Dilation surfaces are generalizations of translation surfaces where the transition maps of the atlas are translations and homotheties with a positive ratio. In contrast with translation surfaces, the directional flow on dilation surfaces may contain trajectories accumulating on a limit cycle. Such a limit cycle is called hyperbolic because it induces a nontrivial homothety. It has been conjectured that a dilation surface with no actual hyperbolic closed geodesic is in fact a translation surface. Assuming that a dilation surface contains a horizon saddle connection, we prove that the directions…
Abelian differentials on Riemann surfaces can be seen as translation surfaces, which are flat surfaces with cone-type singularities. Closed geodesics for the associated flat metrics form cylinders whose number under a given maximal length generically has quadratic asymptotics in this length, with a common coefficient constant for the quadratic asymptotics called a Siegel--Veech constant which is shared by almost all surfaces in each moduli space of translation surfaces. Square-tiled surfaces are specific translation surfaces which have their own quadratic asymptotics for the number of cylinder…
We show that the Teichmüller space of a surface without boundary and with punctures, equipped with Thurston's metric is the limit (in an appropriate sense) of Teichmüller spaces of surfaces with boundary, equipped with their arc metrics, when the boundary lengths tend to zero. We use this to obtain a result on the translation distances for mapping classes for their actions on Teichmüller spaces equipped with their arc metrics.
In this paper we investigate the systolic landscape of translation surfaces for fixed genus and fixed angles of their cone points. We furthermore study how the systoles of a translation surface relate to the systoles of its graph of saddle connections. This allows us to develop an algorithm to compute the systolic ratio of origamis in the stratum $\mathcal{H}(1,1)$. We compute the maximal systolic ratio of all origamis in $\mathcal{H}(1,1)$ with up to 67 squares. These computations support a conjecture of Judge and Parlier about the maximal systolic ratio in $\mathcal{H}(1,1)$.
Stratification and realization of singularity data on the Loch Ness monster
Swarthmore College（斯沃斯莫尔学院）；Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Manizales, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Matemáticas y Estadística（哥伦比亚国立大学马尼萨莱斯校区自然科学理学院数学与统计系）
Given $M_φ$, a fibered 3-manifold with boundary, we show that the translation distance of the monodromy $φ$ can be bounded above by the complexity of an essential surface with non-zero slope. Furthermore we prove that the minimal complexity of a surface with non-zero slope in $M_{φ^n}$ tends to infinity as $n\to\infty$. Additionally, we show that an infinite family of fibered hyperbolic knots has translation distance bounded above by two, satisfying a conjecture by Schleimer which postulates that this behavior should hold for all fibered knots.
Veech groups are discrete subgroups of SL(2, R) which play an important role in the theory of translation surfaces. For a special class of translation surfaces called origamis or square-tiled surfaces their Veech groups are subgroups of finite index of SL(2, Z). We show that each stratum of the space of translation surfaces contains infinitely many origamis whose Veech group is a totally non congruence group, i.e. it surjects to SL(2, Z/nZ) for any n.
We study the translation surfaces obtained by considering the unfoldings of the surfaces of Platonic solids. We show that they are all lattice surfaces and we compute the topology of the associated Teichmüller curves. Using an algorithm that can be used generally to compute Teichmüller curves of translation covers of primitive lattice surfaces, we show that the Teichmüller curve of the unfolded dodecahedron has genus 131 with 19 cone singularities and 362 cusps. We provide both theoretical and rigorous computer-assisted proofs that there are no closed saddle connections on the surfaces associa…
