Shearing deformations of Hitchin representations and the Atiyah-Bott-Goldman symplectic form (Q2039279)

Let \(S\) be a closed, connected, oriented surface of genus at least 2. The character variety of \(S\), \(\mathcal{X}_{\text{PSL}_n(\mathbb{R})}(S)\) consists of all group homomorphisms \(\pi_1(S) \rightarrow \text{PSL}_n(\mathbb{R})\) up to conjugation by elements of \(\text{PSL}_n(\mathbb{R})\). The Hitchin component Hit\(_n(S)\) is the component of \(\mathcal{X}_{\text{PSL}_n(\mathbb{R})}(S)\) that contains the image of the Teichmüller component of \(\mathcal{X}_{\text{PSL}_n(\mathbb{R})}(S)\). The elements of the Hitchin component are called Hitchin characters, and they have a number of remarkable geometric properties. In the paper under review, the author studies a certain type of deformations of the Hitchin characters, which are called shearing deformations and are a higher-dimensional generalization of Thurston's earthquakes. Given a Hitchin character \(\rho\), a shearing deformation of \(\rho\) is determined by a geodesic lamination \(\lambda\) and a twisted \(\mathbb{R}^{n-1}\)-valued transversal cocycle \(\alpha\). Let \(\omega\) be the Atiyah-Bott-Goldman symplectic form on Hit\(_n(S)\). Then, the goal of the paper is to compute the pairing \(\omega(U_{\alpha_1}, U_{\alpha_2})\) of the tangent vectors \(U_{\alpha_1}, U_{\alpha_2}\) associated to the shearing of \(\rho\) according to twisted transverse cocycles \(\alpha_1, \alpha_2\) for the geodesic lamination \(\lambda\). This computation is made in two ways, one homological and more conceptual (Theorem 1), and the other more explicit (Theorem 2).