High-energy harmonic maps and degeneration of minimal surfaces (Q6138566)

Let \(S\) be a closed surface of genus \(g\geq 2\) and let \(\rho:\pi_{1}(S) \rightarrow \mathbb{P}\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R}) \times \mathbb{P}\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})\) be a representation that is discrete and faithful in both factors. By a result of \textit{R. M. Schoen} [Lect. Notes Pure Appl. Math. 143, 179--200 (1993; Zbl 0806.58013)], there is a unique \(\rho\)-equivariant minimal surface in \(\mathbb{H}^{2}\times \mathbb{H}^{2}\). The paper under review studies, using the formalism of geodesic currents, the induced metrics on these minimal surfaces and proves that the limits along diverging sequences of representations are mixed structures, i.e., hybrid geometric objects on \(S\) that are in part measured laminations and in part singular flat metrics of finite area induced by meromorphic quadratic differentials. As a consequence, a compactification of the space of pairs of faithful and discrete representations of \(\pi_{1}(S)\) into \(\mathbb{P}\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R}) \times \mathbb{P}\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})\) is obtained.