Cylinder deformations in orbit closures of translation surfaces (Q2260558)

Motivated by the connection to billiards in rational polygons, the \(\mathrm{SL}(2, \mathbb R)\)-action on the moduli space of abelian differentials has become a central topic in the study of dynamical systems. Understanding the dynamics of billiard flows on polygons is closely related to understanding the \(\mathrm{SL}(2, \mathbb R)\) orbit closure of an associated abelian differential. The work under review gives a beautiful connection between the flat geometry of an abelian differential and the structure of its orbit closure. Given a pair \(M = (X, \omega)\) where \(X\) is a compact genus \(g\) Riemann surface and \(\omega\) a holomorphic one-form (an abelian differential), we can view \(M\) as a collection of polygons with parallel sides identified by translations. A horizontal cylinder of \(M\) is simply an embedded Euclidean cylinder in the horizontal direction. If \(\mathcal C\) is the collection of horizontal cylinders on \(M\), we define the cylinder shear \(u_t^{\mathcal C}(M)\) by applying the matrix \(u_t = \left(\begin{smallmatrix} 1 & t\\0 & 1\end{smallmatrix}\right)\) to the cylinders in \(M\). Note that this is not an \(\mathrm{SL}(2, \mathbb R)\)-deformation of the surface \(M\) in general. We also define the vertical stretch \(a_s^{\mathcal C}\) by applying the matrix \(\left(\begin{smallmatrix} 1 & 0\\0 & e^s\end{smallmatrix}\right)\). The main result of this paper is that the vertical stretch and horizontal shear remain in the \(\mathrm{SL}(2, \mathbb R)\)-orbit closure. Namely, \(a_s^{\mathcal C}(u_t^{\mathcal C}(M))\) is in the orbit closure of \(M\) for all \(s, t\). This is a powerful tool for understanding orbit closures. The proof uses the recent work of Eskin-Mirzakhani-Mohammadi [\textit{A. Eskin} and \textit{M. Mirzakhani}, ``Invariant and stationary measures for the \(\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb R)\) action on moduli space'', Preprint, \url{http://www.arxiv.org/pdf/1302.3320}; \textit{A. Eskin, M. Mirzakhani} and \textit{A. Mohammadi}, ``Isolation theorems for \(\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb R)\)-invariant submanifolds in moduli space'', Preprint, \url{http://www.arxiv.org/pdf/1305.3015}] showing that the \(\mathrm{GL}(2,\mathbb R)\) orbit closure of any translation surface is an affine invariant submanifold, but modulo that the arguments are concrete and geometric, using the fact that the cylinder shear on the surface can be viewed as a linear flow on an \(r\)-torus where \(r\) is the number of horizontal cylinders.