Affine deformations of a three-holed sphere (Q982164)

By associating to every complete affine 3-manifold \(M\) with nonsolvable fundamental group a noncompact hyperbolic surface \(\Sigma\), the authors classify such complete affine structures when \(\Sigma\) is homeomorphic to a three-holed sphere. In particular, for every such complete hyperbolic surface \(\Sigma\), the deformation space identifies with two opposite octants in 3-dimensional real space. Furthermore every \(M\) admits a fundamental polyhedron bounded by crooked planes. Therefore \(M\) is homeomorphic to an open solid handlebody of genus two. In this case, such a result gives a complete description of the deformation space and the topological type. As an explicit application of this theory, the authors construct proper affine deformations of an arithmetic Fuchsian group inside the 4-dimensional real symplectic group.