Trimmed sums of twists and the area Siegel-Veech constant (Q2049521)

The main result of [the author, J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 19, No. 10, 3053--3089 (2017; Zbl 1379.30031)] was a generalization of the Diamond-Vaaler strong law for continued fraction coefficients [\textit{H. G. Diamond} and \textit{J. D. Vaaler}, Pac. J. Math. 122, 73--82 (1986; Zbl 0589.10056)] to trimmed sums of excursions of a random geodesic in the thin parts of moduli spaces of quadratic differentials. In this article, the author builds on the above-mentioned result to relate trimmed sums of twists in cylinders along a typical Teichmüller geodesic to the area Siegel-Veech constant. More precisely, let \(S\) be an oriented surface of finite type, and \(\mu\) be a regular \(\operatorname{SL}(2, \mathbb{R})\)-invariant measure in the Lebesgue class on an affine invariant manifold \(\mathcal{N}\) in a stratum of quadratic differentials on \(S\). If \(\alpha\) is the core curve of a cylinder, given a sufficiently small \(\epsilon\), the cylinder thin part is the subset of \(\mathcal{N}\) of those \(q\) where the length of \(\alpha\) squared is less than \(\epsilon\). The intersection of the cylinder thin part of \(\mathcal{N}\) with a typical Teichmüller disc is a collection of horoballs. Given a Teichmüller ray \(\gamma_t\), consider an excursion of this ray inside one of these horoballs. If \(\beta_t\) is a segment perpendicular to \(\alpha\), the twist parameter \(\text{tw}_t^-(\alpha)\) is the highest intersection number of a leaf of the horizontal foliation of \(\gamma_t\) with \(\beta_t\). If \(t_2\geq t_1\) are the entry and exit time of \(\gamma\) inside a horoball the twist is \(\text{tw}(\alpha) = \text{tw}_{t_2}^-(\alpha) - \text{tw}_{t_1}^-(\alpha)\). The result of the article is now as follows. For \(\mu\)-almost every \(q\in\mathcal{N}\), consider the Teichmüller geodesic ray given by \(q\). Suppose that until time \(T>0\) the ray has excursions in the thin parts of cylinders \(\{\text{Cyl}_1,\dotsc,\text{Cyl}_{N(T)}\}\), ordered by time. Let \(\alpha_j\) the core curve of \(\text{Cyl}_j\). Then \[ \lim_{T\to\infty} \frac{\sum_{j<N(T)} \text{tw}(\alpha_j) - \max_{j<N(T)}\text{tw}(\alpha_j)}{T\log T} = 4c_\text{area}(\mathcal{N}), \] where \(c_\text{area}(\mathcal{N})\) is the area Siegel-Veech constant for \(\mathcal{N}\). This result is proven by relating twists to excursions into horoballs, measured by projecting the excursion onto the boundary of the horoball and using the path metric on the boundary. Finally, the main result of the author from [loc. cit.] is invoked to conclude.