Topological Veech dichotomy and tessellations of the hyperbolic plane (Q2164432)

This interesting paper introduces a tessellation of the hyperbolic plane \(\mathbb{H}\) associated with a half-translation surface \(M\) (i.e., a Riemann surface equipped with a holomorphic quadratic differential). The tessellation \(\Pi\) is determined by ideal triangles with vertices in \(\partial_\infty \mathbb{H} = \mathbb{R} \cup \{ \infty \}\) determined by the slopes of saddle-connections that bound embedded Euclidean triangles in \(M\). It follows from its construction that \(\Pi\) is invariant under half-translation coverings. Another tessellation was proposed in [\textit{W. A. Veech}, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 103, No. 4, 710--745 (2011; Zbl 1238.32013)] where the tiles are defined by the subsets of an \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{R})\)-orbit of \(M\) having the same Delaunay decompositions (with respect to the flat metric and based at the singular points). This paper shows that at least for the flat torus, these two tessellations coincide, and is in fact the Farey tessellation. The half-translation surface \(M\) satisfies the \textit{topological Veech dichotomy} if every slope of a saddle connection is a periodic direction. For such a surface the paper defines a ``graph of periodic directions'' \(\mathcal{G}\) that is derived from the tessellation \(\Pi\), and proves that it has infinite diameter and is Gromov hyperbolic. This is inspired by the seminal work of \textit{H. A. Masur} and \textit{Y. N. Minsky} [Invent. Math. 138, No. 1, 103--149 (1999; Zbl 0941.32012)] who proved these properties for the curve complex. The proof of Gromov hyperbolicity uses a criterion of \textit{H. Masur} and \textit{S. Schleimer} in [J. Am. Math. Soc. 26, No. 1, 1--62 (2013; Zbl 1272.57015)]. A \textit{Veech surface} is a half-translation surface whose group of affine automorphisms \(\Gamma\) is a lattice in \(\mathrm{PSL}_2(\mathbb{R})\); such a surface satisfies the topological Veech dichotomy. The paper goes on to show that the Veech group \(\Gamma\) acts freely on the graph \(\mathcal{G}\) with a \textit{finite} quotient \(\overline{\mathcal{G}} = \mathcal{G}/\Gamma\). As an application, the Appendix of the paper provides an algorithm to explicitly determine this finite graph, and from that, a generating set for the Veech group. As the paper mentions, it would be interesting to investigate what properties of the Teichmüller curve \(\mathbb{H}/\Gamma\) is captured by the finite graph \(\overline{\mathcal{G}}\).