In the moduli space of quadratic differentials over complex structures on a surface, we construct a set of full Hausdorff dimension of points with bounded Teichmüller geodesic trajectories.The main tool is quantitative nondivergence of Teichmüller horocycles, due to Minsky and Weiss. This has an application to billiards in rational polygons.
We show that the rate of mixing of the Weil-Petersson flow on non-exceptional (higher dimensional) moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces is at most polynomial.
We compute the asymptotics, as R tends to infinity, of the number of closed geodesics in Moduli space of length at most R, or equivalently the number of pseudo-Anosov elements of the mapping class group of translation length at most R.
Slowly divergent geodesics in the moduli space of Riemann surfaces of genus at least 2 are constructed via cyclic branched covers of the torus. Nonergodic examples (i.e. geodesics whose defining quadratic differential has nonergodic vertical foliation) diverging to infinity at sublinear rates are constructed using a Diophantine condition. Examples with an arbitrarily slow prescribed growth rate are also exhibited.
We study Weil-Petersson (WP) geodesics with narrow end invariant and develop techniques to control length-functions and twist parameters along them and prescribe their itinerary in the moduli space of Riemann surfaces. This class of geodesics is rich enough to provide for examples of closed WP geodesics in the thin part of the moduli space, as well as divergent WP geodesic rays with minimal filling ending lamination. Some ingredients of independent interest are the following: A strength version of Wolpert's Geodesic Limit Theorem proved in Sec.4. The stability of hierarchy resolution paths bet…
A closed Teichmuller geodesic in the moduli space M_g of Riemann surfaces of genus g is called L-short if it has length at most L/g. We show that, for any L > 0, there exist e_2 > e_1 > 0, independent of g, so that the L-short geodesics in M_g all lie in the intersection of the e_1-thick part and the e_2-thin part. We also estimate the number of L-short geodesics in M_g, bounding this from above and below by polynomials in g whose degrees depend on L and tend to infinity as L does.
We prove that the set of bounded geodesics in Teichmuller space are a winning set for Schmidt's game. This is a notion of largeness in a metric space that can apply to measure 0 and meager sets. We prove analogous closely related results on any Riemann surface, in any stratum of quadratic differentials, on any Teichmuller disc and for intervals exchanges with any fixed irreducible permutation.
We establish exponential mixing for the geodesic flow $φ_t\colon T^1S\to T^1S$ of an incomplete, negatively curved surface $S$ with cusp-like singularities of a prescribed order. As a consequence, we obtain that the Weil-Petersson flows for the moduli spaces ${\mathcal M}_{1,1}$ and ${\mathcal M}_{0,4}$ are exponentially mixing, in sharp contrast to the flows for ${\mathcal M}_{g,n}$ with $3g-3+n>1$, which fail to be rapidly mixing. In the proof, we present a new method of analyzing invariant foliations for hyperbolic flows with singularities, based on changing the Riemannian metric on the pha…
We construct an example of a quadratic differential whose vertical foliation is uniquely ergodic and such that the Teichmuller geodesic determined by the quadratic differential diverges in the moduli space of Riemann surfaces.
We consider the discrete shrinking target problem for Teichmüller geodesic flow on the moduli space of abelian or quadratic differentials and prove that the discrete geodesic trajectory of almost every differential will hit a shrinking family of targets infinitely often provided the measures of the targets are not summable. This result applies to any ergodic $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$--invariant measure and any nested family of spherical targets. Under stronger conditions on the targets, we moreover prove that almost every differential will eventually always hit the targets. As an application…
In this paper we provide a formulation for sweeping processes with arbitrary locally bounded retraction, not necessarily left or right continuous. Moreover we provide a proof of the existence and uniqueness of solutions for this formulation which relies on the reduction to the $1$-Lipschitz continuous case by using a suitable family of geodesics for the asymmetric Hausdorff-like distance called "excess".
For a non-uniform lattice in SL(2,R), we consider excursions in cusp neighborhoods of a random geodesic on the corresponding finite area hyperbolic surface or orbifold. We prove a strong law for a certain partial sum involving these excursions. This generalizes a theorem of Diamond and Vaaler for continued fractions. In the Teichmuller setting, we consider invariant measures for the SL(2,R) action on the moduli spaces of quadratic differentials. By the work of Eskin and Mirzakhani, these measures are supported on affine invariant submanifolds of a stratum of quadratic differentials. For a Teic…
Cutting a hyperbolic surface X along a simple closed multi-geodesic results in a hyperbolic structure on the complementary subsurface. We study the distribution of the shapes of these subsurfaces in moduli space as boundary lengths go to infinity, showing that they equidistribute to the Kontsevich measure on a corresponding moduli space of metric ribbon graphs. In particular, random subsurfaces look like random ribbon graphs, a law which does not depend on the initial choice of X. This result strengthens Mirzakhani's famous simple closed multi-geodesic counting theorems for hyperbolic surfaces…
Masur's divergence states that the horizontal foliation of translation surfaces is uniquely ergodic if the geodesic flow is recurrent on the moduli space. This established a relationship between geometrical properties of foliations and the dynamics on the moduli space. In this paper, we extend this theorem to complex torus and Kummer surfaces. We define and calculate horizontal foliations and the corresponding geodesic flow in the moduli space of Kähler metrics and prove that the horizontal foliation is uniquely ergodic if the geodesic flow is recurrent. We also find the a necessary algebraic …
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 prove that the geodesic flow for the Weil-Petersson metric on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces is ergodic (in fact Bernoulli) and has finite, positive metric entropy.
Bounded deviations in higher genus II: minimal laminations
Sorbonne Université(索邦大学);Université Paris Cité(巴黎西岱大学);CNRS, IMJ-PRG(法国国家科学研究中心,IMJ-PRG);IRL Jean-Christophe Yoccoz CNRS / IMPA(让-克里斯托夫·尤科兹中法国际研究实验室 法国国家科学研究中心/巴西高等研究所);Instituto de Matemática e Estatística da Universidade de São Paulo(圣保罗大学数学与统计学院)
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…
We use the relation between the volumes of the strata of meromorphic quadratic differentials with at most simple poles on the Riemann sphere and counting functions of the number of (bands of) closed geodesics in associated flat metrics with singularities to prove a very explicit formula for the volume of each such stratum conjectured by M. Kontsevich a decade ago. The proof is based on a formula for the Lyapunov exponents of the geodesic flow on the moduli space, which gives a recursive formula from which the volumes could be recovered. An appendix with an ergodic theorem proved by Jon Chaika …
The set B of geodesic rays avoiding a suitable obstacle in a complete negatively curved Riemannian manifold determines a spectrum S. While various properties of this spectrum are known, we define and study dimension functions on S in terms of the Hausdorff-dimension of suitable subsets of the set of bounded geodesic rays. We establish estimates on the Hausdorff-dimension of these subsets and thereby obtain non-trivial bounds for the dimension functions. Moreover we discuss the property of B being an absolute winning set, therefore satisfying a remarkable rigidity. Finally, we apply the obtaine…
Given a simple closed curve $γ$ on a connected, oriented, closed surface $S$ of negative Euler characteristic, Mirzakhani showed that the set of points in the moduli space of hyperbolic structures on $S$ having a simple closed geodesic of length $L$ of the same topological type as $γ$ equidistributes with respect to a natural probability measure as $L \to \infty$. We prove several generalizations of Mirzakhani's result and discuss some of the technical aspects ommited in her original work. The dynamics of the earthquake flow play a fundamental role in the arguments in this paper.
We consider a geometric property of the closest-points projection to a geodesic in Teichmüller space: the projection is called contracting if arbitrarily large balls away from the geodesic project to sets of bounded diameter. (This property always holds in negatively curved spaces.) It is shown here to hold if and only if the geodesic is precompact, i.e. its image in the moduli space is contained in a compact set. Some applications are given, e.g. to stability properties of certain quasi-geodesics in Teichmüller space, and to estimates of translation distance for pseudo-Anosov maps.
Let S be a nonexceptional oriented surface of finite type. We construct an uncountable family of probability measures on the space of area on holomorphic quadratic differentials over the moduli space for S containing the usual Lebesgue measure. These measures are invariant under the Teichmueller geodesic flow, and they are mixing, absolutely continuous with respect to the stable and unstable foliation adn exponentially recurrent to a compact set. Finally we show that the critical exponent of the mapping class group equals the dimension of the Teichmueller space for S. Moreover, this critical e…
In 1981 Masur proved the existence of a dense geodesic in the moduli space for a Teichmüller space. We prove an analogue theorem for reduced Outer Space endowed with the Lipschitz metric. We also prove two results possibly of independent interest: we show Brun's unordered algorithm weakly converges and from this prove that the set of Perron-Frobenius eigenvectors of positive integer $m \times m$ matrices is dense in the positive cone $\mathbb{R}^m_+$ (these matrices will in fact be the transition matrices of positive automorphisms). We give a proof in the appendix that not every point in the b…