Correlation Theorem and Hitchin representations

Sat Sep 3, 2022 4:00 p.m.—5:00 p.m.
Exterior of Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall featuring a stone carving of Yale's coat of arms and motto

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Seminar: 
Group Actions, Geometry and Dynamics

Event time: 
Monday, October 3, 2022 - 4:00pm

Location: 
LOM 206

Speaker: 
Giuseppe Martone

Speaker affiliation: 
Yale

Event description: 
Given two hyperbolic structures m and m’ on a closed orientable surface, how many closed curves have m- and m’-length roughly equal to x, as x gets large? Schwartz and Sharp’s correlation theorem answers this question. Their explicit asymptotic formula involves a term exp(Mx) and 0<M<1 is the correlation number of the hyperbolic structures m and m’.

In this talk, we will show that the correlation number can decay to zero as we vary m and m’, answering a question of Schwartz and Sharp. Then, we extend the correlation theorem to the context of higher Teichmuller theory. We find diverging sequences of SL(3,R)-Hitchin representations along which the correlation number stays uniformly bounded away from zero.

This talk is based on joint work with Xian Dai.