arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to William M. Goldman.
Almost 20 years ago, the first and fourth authors found examples of SL(2,R)-invariant subbundles of Hodge bundles over Teichmüller curves having maximally degenerate Lyapunov spectrum. For these same surfaces, we show that a natural non-Abelian analogue has no zero Lyapunov exponents.
Let $Σ$ be a compact orientable surface of genus $g=1$ with $n=1$ boundary component. The mapping class group $Γ$ of $Σ$ acts on the SU(3)-character variety of $Σ$. We show that the action is ergodic with respect to the natural symplectic measure on the character variety.
In the early 1980's Margulis startled the world by showing the existence of proper affine actions of free groups on 3-space, answering a provocative and suggestive question Milnor posed in 1977. In this paper we discuss the historical background motivating this question, recent progress on this subject, and future directions inspired by this discovery.
We extend Teichmueller dynamics to a flow on the total space of a flat bundle of deformation spaces of representations of the fundamental group of a fixed surface S in a Lie group G. The resulting dynamical system is a continuous version of the action of the mapping class group of S on the deformation space. We observe how ergodic properties of this action relate to this flow. When G is compact, this flow is strongly mixing over each component of the derormation space and of each stratum of the Teichmueller unit sphere bundle over the Riemann moduli space. We prove ergodicity for the analogous lift of the Weil-Petersson geodesic local. flow.
We derive an identity for Margulis invariants of affine deformations of a complete orientable one-ended hyperbolic sur- face following the identities of McShane, Mirzakhani and Tan- Wong-Zhang. As a corollary, a deformation of the surface which infinitesimally lengthens all interior simple closed curves must in- finitesimally lengthen the boundary.
A Margulis spacetime is a complete flat affine Lorentzian 3-manifold with free fundamental group. Associated to $M$ is a noncompact complete hyperbolic surface $Σ$. We study double extensions of $π_1 (M) \cong π_1 (Σ)$ when $Σ$ is homeomorphic to a projective plane minus two discs. We classify proper actions of this double extension on Minkowski space and show that there exist proper actions that do not admit crooked fundamental domains.
A Margulis spacetime is a complete flat Lorentzian 3-manifold M with free fundamental group. Associated to M is a noncompact complete hyperbolic surface S homotopy-equivalent to M. The purpose of this paper is to classify Margulis spacetimes when S is homeomorphic to a one-holed torus. We show that every such M decomposes into polyhedra bounded by crooked planes, corresponding to an ideal triangulation of S. This paper classifies and analyzes the structure of crooked ideal triangles, which play the same role for Margulis spacetimes as ideal triangles play for hyperbolic surfaces. This extends our previous work on affine deformations of three-holed sphere and two-holed cross surfaces.
Crooked planes were defined by Drumm to bound fundamental polyhedra in Minkowski space for Margulis spacetimes. They were extended by Frances to closed polyhedral surfaces in the conformal compactification of Minkowski space (Einstein space) which we call crooked surfaces. The conformal model of anti-de Sitter space is the interior of the quotient of Einstein space by an involution fixing an Einstein plane. The purpose of this note is to show that the crooked planes defined in anti-de Sitter space recently by Danciger-Guéritaud-Kassel lift to restrictions of crooked surfaces in Einstein space which are adapted under the involution of Einstein space defining anti-de Sitter space.
A Margulis spacetime is a complete affine 3-manifold M with nonsolvable fundamental group. Associated to every Margulis spacetime is a noncompact complete hyperbolic surface S. We show that every Margulis spacetime is orientable, even though S may be nonorientable. We classify Margulis spacetimes when S is homeomorphic to a two-holed cross-surface, that is, the complement of two disjoint discs in the real projective plane. We show that every such manifold is homeomorphic to a solid handlebody of genus two, and admits a fundamental polyhedron bounded by crooked planes. Furthermore, the deformation space is a bundle of convex quadrilateral cones over the space of marked hyperbolic structures. The sides of each quadrilateral cone are defined by invariants of the two boundary components and the two orientation-reversing simple curves. The two-holed cross-surface, together with the three-holed sphere, are the only topologies for which the deformation space of complete affine structures is finite-sided.
We present a list of open questions on various aspects of AdS geometry, that is, the geometry of Lorentz spaces of constant curvature -1. When possible we point out relations with homogeneous spaces and discrete subgroups of Lie groups, to Teichmüller theory, as well as analogs in hyperbolic geometry.
We survey developments arising from Milnor's 1958 paper, "On the existence of a connection with curvature zero" and his 1977 paper, "On fundamental groups of complete affinely flat manifolds".
Let Σbe a compact orientable surface with genus g and n boundary components B = (B_1,..., B_n). Let c = (c_1,...,c_n) in [-2,2]^n. Then the mapping class group MCG of Σacts on the relative SU(2)-character variety X_c := Hom_C(π, SU(2))/SU(2), comprising conjugacy classes of representations ρwith tr(ρ(B_i)) = c_i. This action preserves a symplectic structure on the smooth part of X_c, and the corresponding measure is finite. Suppose g = 1 and n = 2. Let J be the subgroup of MCG generated by Dehn twists along null homologous simple loops in Σ. Then the action of J on X_c is ergodic for almost all c.
Let M be a Margulis spacetime whose associated complete hyperbolic surface S has compact convex core. Generalizing the correspondence between closed geodesics on M and closed geodesics on S, we establish an orbit equivalence between recurrent spacelike geodesics on M and recurrent geodesics on S. In contrast, no timelike geodesic recurs in either forward or backwards time.
A natural family of affine cubic surfaces arises from SL(2)-characters of the 4-holed sphere and the 1-holed torus. The ideal locus is a tritangent plane which is generic in the sense that the cubic curve at infinity consists of three lines pairwise intersecting in three double points. We show that every affine cubic surface which is smooth at infinity and whose ideal locus is a generic tritangent plane arises as a relative SL(2)-character variety of the 4-holed sphere. Every such affine cubic for which all the periodic automorphisms of the tritangent plane extend to automorphisms of the cubic arises as a relative SL(2)-character variety of a 1-holed torus.
In his 1990 doctoral thesis, Todd Drumm showed that proper affine deformations of free Fuchsian groups could be constructed as Schottky groups using a new family of hypersurfaces called "crooked planes." The existence of proper affine deformations of Fuchsian Schottky groups was demonstrated by Margulis in the early 1980's, answering a question raised by Milnor in 1977. This paper expounds Drumm's result, at least in the case of Fuchsian Schottky groups (that is, when the group contains no parabolic elements).
Motivated by Felix Klein's notion that geometry is governed by its group of symmetry transformations, Charles Ehresmann initiated the study of geometric structures on topological spaces locally modeled on a homogeneous space of a Lie group. These locally homogeneous spaces later formed the context of Thurston's 3-dimensional geometrization program. The basic problem is for a given topology S and a geometry X = G/H, to classify all the possible ways of introducing the local geometry of G/H into S. For example, a sphere admits no local Euclidean geometry: there is no metrically accurate Euclidean atlas of the earth. One develops a space whose points are equivalence classes of geometric structures on S, which itself exhibits a rich geometry and symmetries arising from the topological symmetries of S. In this talk I will survey several examples of the classification of locally homogeneous geometric structures on manifolds in low dimension, and how it leads to a general study of surface group representations. In particular geometric structures are a useful tool in understanding local and global properties of deformation spaces of representations of fundamental groups.
This paper applies the authors' forthcoming work, "Affine deformations of a three-holed sphere" in Lorentzian geometry to prove a result in hyperbolic geometry. Namely, an infinitesimal deformation of a hyperbolic structure of a three-holed sphere which infinitesimally lengthens the three boundary components infinitesimally lengthens every closed geodesic. The proof interprets the derivative of the geodesic length function as the Margulis invariant (signed marked Lorentzian length spectrum) of the corresponding affine deformation. The aforementioned results imply that the affine deformation is proper, and hence by Margulis's Opposite Sign Lemma, every closed geodesic infinitesimmaly lengthens.