Zero Lyapunov exponents of the Hodge bundle (Q2510754)

The Kontsevich-Zorich cocycle arises from the renormalization dynamics of straight line flows (respectively leaves of foliations) associated to holomorphic abelian (respectively quadratic) differentials on Riemann surfaces. The Lyapunov exponents of this cocycle represent different (power-law) orders of deviation from the asymptotic cycles for these flows. Of particular interest are when exponents are zero, indicating very slow deviations. There are no zero exponents for the full Hodge bundle, but there are \(\mathrm{PSL}(2, \mathbb R)\)-invariant manifolds for which there are zero exponents. Until this paper, in all known examples the zero exponents corresponded to a \(\mathrm{PSL}(2, \mathbb R)\)-invariant subbundle for which the monodromy of the Gauss-Manin connection acts by isometries of the Hodge metric. The paper gives an example of an arithmetic Teichmüller curve, with zero Lyapunov exponents, for which the real Hodge bundle does not contain any \(\mathrm{PSL}(2, \mathbb R)\)-invariant subbundles. The construction comes from a covering of a setting with an invariant sub-bundle, and the authors conjecture that this is the only mechanism for zero exponents.