The boundary of an affine invariant submanifold (Q2407546)

The study of dynamics of the SL\((2, \mathbb R)\)-action on strata of moduli spaces of abelian differentials often crucially relies on understanding recurrence behavior, and in particular the geometry of neighborhoods of the boundary of strata. Following the crucial works [Preprint, arXiv:1302.3320 (2013)] and [\textit{A. Eskin} et al., Ann. Math. (2) 182, No. 2, 673--721 (2015; Zbl 1357.37040)] on the classification of SL\((2, \mathbb R)\)-invariant measures and orbit closures, it has become important to understand the boundaries of SL\((2, \mathbb R)\)-orbit closures. In the paper under review, a precise description of the tangent space to the boundary of SL\((2, \mathbb R)\)-orbit closures is given, using differentials on nodal Riemann surfaces up to zero-area components. A beautiful application (Theorem 1.3) is given, claiming that if an affine invariant manifold is large in the sense of rank, it is close to being the whole stratum. Precisely, affine invariant submanifolds of full rank must either be full strata or full hyperelliptic loci.