We prove quantitative recurrence and large deviations results for the Teichmuller geodesci flow on a connected component of a stratum of the moduli space $Q_g$ of holomorphic unit-area quadratic differentials on a compact genus $g \geq 2$ surface.
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.
In this note we show that the transfer operator of a Rauzy-Veech-Zorich renormalization map acting on a space of quasi-Hölder functions is quasicompact and derive certain statistical recurrence properties for this map and its associated Teichmüller flow. We establish Borel-Cantelli lemmas, Extreme Value statistics and return time statistics for the map and flow. Previous results have established quasicompactness in Hölder or analytic function spaces, for example the work of M. Pollicott and T. Morita. The quasi-Hölder function space is particularly useful for investigating return time statisti…
The set of directions from a quadratic differential that diverge on average under Teichmuller geodesic flow has Hausdorff dimension exactly equal to one-half.
We compute the sum of the positive Lyapunov exponents of the Hodge bundle with respect to the Teichmuller geodesic flow. The computation is based on the analytic Riemann-Roch Theorem and uses a comparison of determinants of flat and hyperbolic Laplacians when the underlying Riemann surface degenerates.
We consider the limit set in Thurston's compactification PMF of Teichmueller space of some Teichmueller geodesics defined by quadratic differentials with minimal but not uniquely ergodic vertical foliations. We show that a) there are quadratic differentials so that the limit set of the geodesic is a unique point, b) there are quadratic differentials so that the limit set is a line segment, c) there are quadratic differentials so that the vertical foliation is ergodic and there is a line segment as limit set, and d) there are quadratic differentials so that the vertical foliation is ergodic and…
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 study a diophantine property for translation surfaces, defined in term of saddle connections and inspired by the classical theorem of Khinchin. We prove that the same dichotomy holds as in Khinchin' result, then we deduce a sharp estimation on how fast the typical Teichmuller geodesic wanders towards infinity in the moduli space of translation surfaces. Finally we prove some stronger result in genus one.
We prove that every Teichmuller geodesic of a finite type surface contains a string of intersecting long, thick and dominant segments, such that the distance between consecutive segments is bounded. This is key to obtaining some results about Teichmuller geodesics which mimic those for hyperbolic geodesics. These results have important applications to results about the geometry of hyperbolic three-manifolds.
We study the recurrence and ergodicity for the billiard on noncompact polygonal surfaces with a free, cocompact action of $\Z$ or $\Z^2$. In the $\Z$-periodic case, we establish criteria for recurrence. In the more difficult $\Z^2$-periodic case, we establish some general results. For a particular family of $\Z^2$-periodic polygonal surfaces, known in the physics literature as the wind-tree model, assuming certain restrictions of geometric nature, we obtain the ergodic decomposition of directional billiard dynamics for a dense, countable set of directions. This is a consequence of our results …
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…
We prove a quantitative estimate, with a power saving error term, for the number of simple closed geodesics of length at most $L$ on a compact surface equipped with a Riemannian metric of negative curvature. The proof relies on the exponential mixing rate for the Teichmüller geodesic flow.
We study Poincaré recurrence for flows and observations of flows. For Anosov flow, we prove that the recurrence rates are linked to the local dimension of the invariant measure. More generally, we give for the recurrence rates for the observation an upper bound depending on the push-forward measure. When the flow is metrically isomorphic to a suspension flow for which the dynamic on the base is rapidly mixing, we prove the existence of a lower bound for the recurrence rates for the observation. We apply these results to the geodesic flow and we compute the recurrence rates for a particular obs…
We define an ending lamination for a Weil-Petersson geodesic ray. Despite the lack of a natural visual boundary for the Weil-Petersson metric, these ending laminations provide an effective boundary theory that encodes much of its asymptotic CAT(0) geometry. In particular, we prove an ending lamination theorem (Theorem 1.1) for the full-measure set of rays that recur to the thick part, and we show that the association of an ending lamination embeds asymptote classes of recurrent rays into the Gromov-boundary of the curve complex. As an application, we establish fundamentals of the topological d…
Masur showed that a Teichmuller geodesic that is recurrent in the moduli space of closed Riemann surfaces is necessarily determined by a quadratic differential with a uniquely ergodic vertical foliation. In this paper, we show that a divergent Teichmuller geodesic satisfying a certain slow rate of divergence is also necessarily determined by a quadratic differential with unique ergodic vertical foliation. As an application, we sketch a proof of a complete characterization of the set of nonergodic directions in any double cover of the flat torus branched over two points.
This short survey illustrates the ideas of Teichmuller dynamics. As a model application we consider the asymptotic topology of generic geodesics on a "flat" surface and count closed geodesics and saddle connections. This survey is based on the joint papers with A.Eskin and H.Masur and with M.Kontsevich.
A classical Borel Cantelli Lemma gives conditions for deciding whether an infinite number of rare events will almost surely happen. In this article, we propose an extension of Borel Cantelli Lemma to characterize the multiple occurrence of events on the same time scale. Our results imply multiple Logarithm Laws for recurrence and hitting times, as well as Poisson Limit Laws for systems which are exponentially mixing of all orders. The applications include geodesic flows on compact negatively curved manifolds, geodesic excursions, Diophantine approximations and extreme value theory for dynamica…
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 establish the background for the study of geodesics on noncompact polygonal surfaces. For illustration, we study the recurrence of geodesics on $Z$-periodic polygonal surfaces. We prove, in particular, that almost all geodesics on a topologically typical $Z$-periodic surface with boundary are recurrent.
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…
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…