Isolation, equidistribution, and orbit closures for the \(\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})\) action on moduli space (Q499091)

The dynamics of the \(\mathrm{SL}(2, \mathbb R)\)-action on the moduli space \(\Omega^{(1)}_g\) of unit-area abelian differentials (pairs \((X, \omega)\), where \(\omega\) is a holomorphic \(1\)-form on the compact genus \(g\) Riemann surface \(X\), and the area \(i/2 \int_X \omega \wedge \overline{\omega} = 1\)) has been widely studied in recent years, building on the seminal work of Masur, Veech, Smillie, and many others. Motivations include counting and ergodic properties of rational polygonal billiards and translation flows. The paper under review builds on the prior work of the first two authors to provide foundational results on orbit closures and equidistribution in these spaces, along the lines of previous works, in the setting of homogeneous dynamics. Let \(P\) be the upper-triangular subgroup of \(G = \mathrm{SL}(2, \mathbb R)\). The spaces \(\Omega^{(1)}_g\) are stratified by the orders of zeros of the differentials \(\omega\), we denote a stratum by \(\mathcal H^{(1)}(\alpha)\), where \(\alpha\) is an integer partition of \(2g-2\). An important result of the paper states that for any \(x \in \mathcal H^{(1)}(\alpha)\), \[\overline{P\cdot x} = \overline{G \cdot x},\] and moreover, that this is a \(G\)-invariant manifold which can be defined by linear equations in natural (period) coordinates. In addition, they show that the set of \(P\)-invariant ergodic probability measures is closed in the weak-* topology, and give an equidistribution result for the measures \(\nu_{T, I, x} = d\theta dt\) supported on the set \(\{ a_t r_{\theta} \cdot x\}_{\theta \in I, 0 \le t \le T},\) where \[a_t = \begin{pmatrix} e^{t} & 0 \\ 0 & e^{-t} \end{pmatrix}\] and \[r_{\theta} = \begin{pmatrix} \cos \theta & -\sin \theta \\ \sin \theta & \cos \theta \end{pmatrix}.\] A consequence of this equidistribution is that {for every} abelian differential, the growth of saddle connections (geodesic segments in the flat metric connecting zeros with none in their interior) of length at most \(R\) has weak quadratic asymptotic growth. Earlier, \textit{H. Masur} [in: \textit{D. Drasin} (ed.) et al., Holomorphic functions and moduli. I. Proceedings of a workshop held March 13-19, 1986 (Berkeley, CA, USA). New York etc.: Springer-Verlag (1988; Zbl 0646.00004)] found quadratic upper and lower bounds, \textit{A. Eskin} and \textit{H. Masur} [Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 21, No. 2, 443--478 (2001; Zbl 1096.37501)] showed quadratic asymptotics for almost every (with respect to a natural Lebesgue measure), and \textit{W. A. Veech} [Ann. Math. (2) 148, No. 3, 895--944 (1998; Zbl 0922.22003)] proved \(L^1\)-convergence.