Logarithmic laws and unique ergodicity (Q1630375)

The use of renormalization dynamics (Teichmüller geodesic flow) to understand the ergodic theory of translation flows and interval exchange transformations was pioneered by Masur and Veech. Masur showed that a sufficient condition for unique ergodicity of a translation flow is that the associated Teichmüller geodesic trajectory is non-divergent in moduli space. He also showed that almost every geodesic satisfies a \textit{logarithm law} which governs its excursions to the cusp as measured by the Teichmüller metric. In this paper, the authors show a refinement of Masur's sufficient condition: they show that if the \textit{flat systole} of the surface satisfies a logarithm law along a Teichmüller geodesic, this implies unique ergodicity. They also show that the corresponding statement for Teichmüller distance does \textit{not} imply unique ergodicity.