Area and discreteness of representations

Author(s)

Eduardo Carvalho Bento Gonçalves

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Matemática, Estatística e Computação Científica
• Defense date: 2010-01-07

Examining board members

Alexandre Ananin; Alcibiades Rigas; Misha Verbitsky

• Advisor: Alexandre Ananin

Abstract

First, we present an introduction to plane hyperbolic geometry, which may be useful even for a beginner. Next, using the concept of "simple earthquake", we explicitly describe, in terms of some natural coordinates, the Teichmüller space T Hn of hyperelliptic surfaces. This description turns out to be simple: T Hn is the space of certain (2n ? 6)-tuples of points in the ideal boundary of the hyperbolic plane. Based on the description in question, many results are presented, including: a simple and effective criterion which allows one to verify if a given representation of a surface group in the group of isometries of the hyperbolic plane is faithful and discrete; a new and elementary proof for a result of W. Goldman, which characterizes the faithful and discrete representations as being those which have maximal Toledo invariant; a new and elementary proof for a theorem of D. Toledo, relative to the rigidity of representations of surface groups in the group of holomorphic isometries of the complex hyperbolic space. key-words: Area, discreteness, representations, plane hyperbolic geometry, Teichmüller space, complex hyperbolic geometry (AU)