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Back to Departmental Colloquium: Fall 2014

Departmental Colloquium


Date: Thursday, Nov 20, 2014

Time: 4:00PM

Location: LCB 219


Dawei Chen

Boston College

Title

Moduli space of curves and Teichmueller dynamics

Abstract

A holomorphic one-form defines a flat metric such that the underlying complex curve can be realized as a plane polygon. Varying the shape of the polygon induces an SL(2,R)-action on the Hodge bundle, which is called the Teichmueller dynamics. Among all orbit closures, those of minimal dimension correspond to Teichmueller curves. In this talk I will give an introduction to this beautiful subject, with a focus on the interplay between billiards in polygon and intersection theory on moduli space. As an application, we prove a conjecture of Kontsevich-Zorich about a non-varying property of Teichmueller curves in low genus (joint work with M. Moeller). I promise this talk will be accessible to everyone!

Algebraic Geometry Topology

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