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Department of Mathematics,
University of California San Diego

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Math 211 - Group Actions Seminar

Osama Khalil, Postdoctoral Scholar

University of Utah

On the Mozes-Shah phenomenon for horocycle flows on moduli spaces

Abstract:

The Mozes-Shah phenomenon on homogeneous spaces of Lie groups asserts that the space of ergodic measures under the action by subgroups generated by unipotents is closed. A key input to their work is Ratner's fundamental rigidity theorems. Beyond its intrinsic interest, this result has many applications to counting problems in number theory. The problem of counting saddle connections on flat surfaces has motivated the search for analogous phenomena for horocycle flows on moduli spaces of flat structures. In this setting, Eskin, Mirzakhani, and Mohammadi showed that this property is enjoyed by the space of ergodic measures under the action of (the full upper triangular subgroup of) $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$. We will discuss joint work with Jon Chaika and John Smillie showing that this phenomenon fails to hold for the horocycle flow on the stratum of genus two flat surfaces with one cone point. As a corollary, we show that a dense set of horocycle flow orbits are not generic for any measure; in contrast with Ratner's genericity theorem.

Host: Brandon Seward

June 1, 2021

10:00 AM

Zoom ID 967 4109 3409 (email Nattalie Tamam or Brandon Seward for the password)

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