Meromorphic connections on Riemann surfaces originate and are closely related to the classical theory of linear ordinary differential equations with meromorphic coefficients. Limiting behaviour of geodesics of such connections has been studied by e.g. Abate, Bianchi and Tovena in relation with generalized Poincaré-Bendixson theorems. At present, it seems still to be unknown whether some of the theoretically possible asymptotic behaviours of such geodesics really exist. In order to fill the gap, we use the branched affine structure induced by a Fuchsian meromorphic connection to present several examples with geodesics having infinitely many self-intersections and quite peculiar omega-limit sets.
We prove a Poincaré-Bendixson theorem describing the asymptotic behavior of geodesics for a meromorphic connection on a compact Riemann surface. We shall also briefly discuss the case of non-compact Riemann surfaces, and study in detail the geodesics for a holomorphic connection on a complex torus.
We first study the dynamics of the geodesic flow of a meromorphic connection on a Riemann surface, and prove a Poincaré-Bendixson theorem describing recurrence properties and $ω$-limit sets of geodesics for a meromorphic connection on $¶^1(\C)$. We then show how to associate to a homogeneous vector field $Q$ in ${\Bbb C}^n$ a rank 1 singular holomorphic foliation $\cal F$ of $¶^{n-1}(\C)$ and a (partial) meromorphic connection $\nabla^o$ along $\ca F$ so that integral curves of $Q$ are described by the geodesic flow of $\nabla^o$ along the leaves of $\ca F$, which are Riemann surfaces. The com…
These notes form an extended version of a minicourse delivered in Universite de Montreal (June 2002) within the framework of a NATO workshop ``Normal Forms, Bifurcations and Finiteness Problems in Differential Equations''. The focus is on Poincare--Dulac theory of ``Fuchsian'' (logarithmic) singularities of integrable systems, with applications to problems on zeros of Abelian integrals in view.
We prove a quantitative version of the non-uniform hyperbolicity of the Teichmüller geodesic flow. Namely, at each point of any Teichmüller flow line, we bound the infinitesimal spectral gap for variations of the Hodge norm along the flow line in terms of an easily estimated geometric quantity on the flat surface, which is greater than or equal to the flat systole. As applications, we strengthen results of Treviño and Smith regarding unique ergodicity of measured foliations, and give an estimate for the spectral gaps of pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms based on the location of their axes in the mo…
On a negatively curved surface, we show that the Poincar{é} series counting geodesic arcs orthogonal to some pair of closed geodesic curves has a meromorphic continuation to the whole complex plane. When both curves are homologically trivial, we prove that the Poincar{é} series has an explicit rational value at 0 interpreting it in terms of linking number of Legendrian knots. In particular, for any pair of points on the surface, the lengths of all geodesic arcs connecting the two points determine its genus, and, for any pair of homologically trivial closed geodesics, the lengths of all geodesi…
In translation surfaces of finite area (corresponding to holomorphic differentials), directions of saddle connections are dense in the unit circle. On the contrary, saddle connections are fewer in translation surfaces with poles (corresponding to meromorphic differentials). The Cantor-Bendixson rank of their set of directions is a measure of descriptive set-theoretic complexity. Drawing on a previous work of David Aulicino, we prove a sharp upper bound that depends only on the genus of the underlying topological surface. The proof uses a new geometric lemma stating that in a sequence of three …
We give several unequivalent notions of convergency of meromorphic functions and more generally meromorphic mappings (strong, weak, $Γ$-convergency and some others). Relations between them are investigated. A version of Rouche theorem for the strongly converging sequences of meromorphic mappings is given. Further we investigate the sets of normality of families of meromorphic mappings, connections with extension properties of those mappings, some apriori estimates for the volume. Finally we apply the technique developped to the study of Fatou sets of meromorphic endomorphisms of Kähler surface…
Let $(M,g)$ be a closed oriented negatively curved surface. A unitary connection on a Hermitian vector bundle over $M$ is said to be transparent if its parallel transport along the closed geodesics of $g$ is the identity. We study the space of such connections modulo gauge and we prove a classification result in terms of the solutions of certain PDE that arises naturally in the problem. We also show a local uniqueness result for the trivial connection and that there is a transparent SU(2)-connection associated to each meromorphic function on $M$.
We show that for any transcendental meromorphic function $f$ there is a point $z$ in the Julia set of $f$ such that the iterates $f^n(z)$ escape, that is, tend to $\infty$, arbitrarily slowly. The proof uses new covering results for analytic functions. We also introduce several slow escaping sets, in each of which $f^n(z)$ tends to $\infty$ at a bounded rate, and establish the connections between these sets and the Julia set of $f$. To do this, we show that the iterates of $f$ satisfy a strong distortion estimate in all types of escaping Fatou components except one, which we call a plane-filli…
We show that the number of square-tiled surfaces of genus $g$, with $n$ marked points, with one or both of its horizontal and vertical foliations belonging to fixed mapping class group orbits, and having at most $L$ squares, is asymptotic to $L^{6g-6+2n}$ times a product of constants appearing in Mirzakhani's count of simple closed hyperbolic geodesics. Many of the results in this paper reflect recent discoveries of Delecroix, Goujard, Zograf, and Zorich, but the approach considered here is very different from theirs. We follow conceptual and geometric methods inspired by Mirzakhani's work.
We consider integral geometry inverse problems for unitary connections and skew-Hermitian Higgs fields on manifolds with negative sectional curvature. The results apply to manifolds in any dimension, with or without boundary, and also in the presence of trapped geodesics. In the boundary case, we show injectivity of the attenuated ray transform on tensor fields with values in a Hermitian bundle (i.e. vector valued case). We also show that a connection and Higgs field on a Hermitian bundle are determined up to gauge by the knowledge of the parallel transport between boundary points along all po…
The connection between geodesics on the modular surface $\operatorname{PSL}(2,{\mathbb Z})\backslash {\mathbb H}$ and regular continued fractions, established by Series, is extended to a connection between geodesics on $Γ\backslash {\mathbb H}$ and odd and grotesque continued fractions, where $Γ\cong {\Bbb Z}_3 \ast {\Bbb Z}_3$ is the index two subgroup of $\operatorname{PSL}(2,{\mathbb Z})$ generated by the order three elements $\left( \begin{smallmatrix} 0 & -1 \\ 1 & 1 \end{smallmatrix} \right)$ and $\left( \begin{smallmatrix} 0 & 1 \\ -1 & 1 \end{smallmatrix} \right)$, having an ideal quad…
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 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…
We study algebraic isomonodromic deformations of flat logarithmic connections on the Riemann sphere with $n\geq 4$ poles, for arbitrary rank. We introduce a natural property of algebraizability for the germ of universal deformation of such a connection. We relate this property to a peculiarity of the corresponding monodromy representation: to yield a finite braid group orbit on the appropriate character variety. Under reasonable assumptions on the deformed connection, we may actually establish an equivalence between both properties. We apply this result in the rank two case to relate finite br…
