Hodge-Teichmüller planes and finiteness results for Teichmüller curves (Q2347582)

A (compact, genus-\(g\)) \textit{translation surface} is a pair \((X, \omega)\) where \(X\) is a compact genus-\(g\) Riemann surface and \(\omega\) a holomorphic one-form on \(X\). Integrating \(\omega\) yields an atlas of charts from \(X\) to \(\mathbb C\) away from the zeros of \(\omega\), whose transition maps are of the form \(z \mapsto z+c\), and in these coordinates \(\omega = dz\). There is an \(\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb R)\)-action on the space of unit-area translation surfaces given by linear post-composition with charts. The stabilizer of a surface under this action, known as the \textit{Veech group} is usually trivial but in an important class of examples it is quite large; in fact, it can be a lattice. Such surfaces are known as \textit{Veech} or \textit{lattice} surfaces. An important basic example is the square torus \((\mathbb C/ \mathbb Z[i], dz)\), whose stabilizer is \(\mathrm{SL}(2, \mathbb Z)\), and in fact, any cover of the torus branched over zero yields a Veech surface with stabilizer commensurable to \(\mathrm{SL}(2, \mathbb Z)\). Given any Veech surface, one can use covering constructions to construct infinitely many Veech surfaces with commensurable Veech group, though their genus will grow. We say that a Veech surface is arithmetic if it is a torus cover. From the paper: ``Teichmüller curves come in commensurability classes, and are either arithmetic or not. In the nonarithmetic case, every commensurability class contains a unique minimal representative, which is called \textit{primitive}\dots Teichmüller curves that are primitive for algebraic reasons are called algebraically primitive, and it is precisely these curves which are as nonarithmetic as possible.'' While torus covers are dense in any stratum of translation surfaces, the main result of this theorem is that algebraically primitive translation surfaces are hard to find, namely, ``there are only finitely many algebraically primitive Teichmüller curves in the minimal stratum in prime genus at least 3. Furthermore, algebraically primitive Teichmüller curves are not dense in any connected component of any stratum in genus at least 3.'' The crucial idea in the proof is the development of the theory of Hodge-Teichmüller planes, i.e., certain subspaces of the Hodge bundle which respect to the Hodge decomposition along a full Teichmüller disk.