Lifts of pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms of nonorientable surfaces have vanishing SAF invariant (Q1990276)

Associated to a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism \(\psi\) of an oriented surface, there are the (singular) stable and unstable foliations, which provide the surface with a structure of a translation surface. The vertical flow of this translation surface defines an interval exchange map of a horizontal line which is transverse to the foliations. For an interval exchange map, which is a translation by \(t_i\) on the intervall \((a_{i-1},a_i)\), its SAF-invariant is defined as \(\sum_i (a_i-a_{i-1})\wedge t_i\in {\mathbf R}\wedge_{\mathbf Q}{\mathbf R}\). If the stable and unstable foliation of \(\psi\) are transversely orientable, then the interval exchange map associated to \(\psi\) is defined up to scale and thus vanishing or nonvanishing of its SAF-invariant is well defined. The paper considers the case when \(\psi\) is a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism of a nonorientable surface and \(\tilde{\psi}\) the lift to its orientable double cover. It proves that under these assumption the SAF-invariant of \(\tilde{\psi}\) vanishes. The proof goes in three steps. First, it is shown that for the stretch factor \(\lambda\) of a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism on a nonorientable surface, \(\lambda\) and \(\frac{1}{\lambda}\) are not Galois conjugate. This implies that \({\mathbf Q}(\frac{1}{\lambda})\) agrees with \({\mathbf Q}(\lambda+\frac{1}{\lambda})\). (Otherwise it would be a field extension of degree \(2\).) By the work of \textit{K. Calta} and \textit{T. A. Schmidt} [J. Mod. Dyn. 7, No. 2, 239--254 (2013; Zbl 1322.30015)] this implies that the SAF-invariant vanishes. In Section 3 the author outlines another more geometric argument. Finally it is shown that several examples considered in the literature satisfy the assumptions of the theorem.