We prove the existence of a smoothing for a toroidal crossing space under mild assumptions. By linking log structures with infinitesimal deformations, the result receives a very compact form for normal crossing spaces. The main approach is to study log structures that are incoherent on a subspace of codimension 2 and prove a Hodge–de Rham degeneration theorem for such log spaces that also settles a conjecture by Danilov. We show that the homotopy equivalence between Maurer–Cartan solutions and deformations combined with Batalin–Vilkovisky theory can be used to obtain smoothings. The construction of new Calabi–Yau and Fano manifolds as well as Frobenius manifold structures on moduli spaces provides potential applications.

We compute the gap distribution of directions of saddle connections for two classes of translation surfaces. One class will be the translation surfaces arising from gluing two identical tori along a slit. These yield the first explicit computations of gap distributions for non-lattice translation surfaces. We show that this distribution has support at zero and quadratic tail decay. We also construct examples of translation surfaces in any genus $d>1$ that have the same gap distribution as the gap distribution of two identical tori glued along a slit. The second class we consider are twice-marked tori and saddle connections between distinct marked points with a specific orientation. These results can be interpreted as the gap distribution of slopes of affine lattices. We obtain our results by translating the question of gap distributions to a dynamical question of return times to a transversal under the horocycle flow on an appropriate moduli space.

By use of a natural map introduced recently by the first and third authors from the space of pure-type complex differential forms on a complex manifold to the corresponding one on the small differentiable deformation of this manifold, we will give a power series proof for Kodaira–Spencer’s local stability theorem of Kähler structures. We also obtain two new local stability theorems, one of balanced structures on an n-dimensional balanced manifold with the $(n-1,n)$ th mild $\partial \overline {\partial }$ -lemma by power series method and the other one on p-Kähler structures with the deformation invariance of $(p,p)$ -Bott–Chern numbers.

In this note we show that the expected value of the separating systole of a random surface of genus g with respect to Weil–Petersson volume behaves like $2\log g $ as the genus goes to infinity. This is in strong contrast to the behavior of the expected value of the systole which, by results of Mirzakhani and Petri, is independent of genus.

The general position hypothesis needs strengthening.

Let X be a normal compact Kähler space with klt singularities and torsion canonical bundle. We show that X admits arbitrarily small deformations that are projective varieties if its locally trivial deformation space is smooth. We then prove that this unobstructedness assumption holds in at least three cases: if X has toroidal singularities, if X has finite quotient singularities and if the cohomology group ${\mathrm {H}^{2} \!\left ( X, {\mathscr {T}_{X}} \right )}$ vanishes.

We derive a quadratic recursion relation for the linear Hodge integrals of the form $\langle \tau _{2}^{n}\lambda _{k}\rangle $ . These numbers are used in a formula for Masur-Veech volumes of moduli spaces of quadratic differentials discovered by Chen, Möller and Sauvaget. Therefore, our recursion provides an efficient way of computing these volumes.

A meander is a topological configuration of a line and a simple closed curve in the plane (or a pair of simple closed curves on the 2-sphere) intersecting transversally. Meanders can be traced back to H. Poincaré and naturally appear in various areas of mathematics, theoretical physics and computational biology (in particular, they provide a model of polymer folding). Enumeration of meanders is an important open problem. The number of meanders with $2N$ crossings grows exponentially when $N$ grows, but the long-standing problem on the precise asymptotics is still out of reach.

We show that the situation becomes more tractable if one additionally fixes the topological type (or the total number of minimal arcs) of a meander. Then we are able to derive simple asymptotic formulas for the numbers of meanders as $N$ tends to infinity. We also compute the asymptotic probability of getting a simple closed curve on a sphere by identifying the endpoints of two arc systems (one on each of the two hemispheres) along the common equator.

The new tools we bring to bear are based on interpretation of meanders as square-tiled surfaces with one horizontal and one vertical cylinder. The proofs combine recent results on Masur–Veech volumes of moduli spaces of meromorphic quadratic differentials in genus zero with our new observation that horizontal and vertical separatrix diagrams of integer quadratic differentials are asymptotically uncorrelated. The additional combinatorial constraints we impose in this article yield explicit polynomial asymptotics.

Given integers $g,n\geqslant 0$ satisfying $2-2g-n<0$, let ${\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ be the moduli space of connected, oriented, complete, finite area hyperbolic surfaces of genus $g$ with $n$ cusps. We study the global behavior of the Mirzakhani function $B:{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}\rightarrow \mathbf{R}_{{\geqslant}0}$ which assigns to $X\in {\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ the Thurston measure of the set of measured geodesic laminations on $X$ of hyperbolic length ${\leqslant}1$. We improve bounds of Mirzakhani describing the behavior of this function near the cusp of ${\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ and deduce that $B$ is square-integrable with respect to the Weil–Petersson volume form. We relate this knowledge of $B$ to statistics of counting problems for simple closed hyperbolic geodesics.

Our main point of focus is the set of closed geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces. For any fixed integer k, we are interested in the set of all closed geodesics with at least k (but possibly more) self-intersections. Among these, we consider those of minimal length and investigate their self-intersection numbers. We prove that their intersection numbers are upper bounded by a universal linear function in k (which holds for any hyperbolic surface). Moreover, in the presence of cusps, we get bounds which imply that the self-intersection numbers behave asymptotically like k for growing k.

J.-C. Yoccoz proposed a natural extension of Selberg’s eigenvalue conjecture to moduli spaces of abelian differentials. We prove an approximation to this conjecture. This gives a qualitative generalization of Selberg’s $\frac{3}{16}$ theorem to moduli spaces of abelian differentials on surfaces of genus ${\geqslant}2$.

Using Roelcke’s formula for the Green function, we explicitly construct a basis in the kernel of the adjoint Laplacian on a compact polyhedral surface $X$ and compute the $S$-matrix of $X$ at the zero value of the spectral parameter. We apply these results to study various self-adjoint extensions of a symmetric Laplacian on a compact polyhedral surface of genus two with a single conical point. It turns out that the behaviour of the $S$-matrix at the zero value of the spectral parameter is sensitive to the geometry of the polyhedron.

In this we exploit the arithmeticity criterion of Oh and Benoist–Miquel to exhibit an origami in the principal stratum of the moduli space of translation surfaces of genus three whose Kontsevich–Zorich monodromy is not thin in the sense of Sarnak.

By use of a natural extension map and a power series method, we obtain a local stability theorem for $p$-Kähler structures with the $(p,p+1)$th mild $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}}$-lemma under small differentiable deformations.

We describe in this article the dynamics of a one-parameter family of affine interval exchange transformations. This amounts to studying the directional foliations of a particular dilatation surface introduced in Duryev et al [Affine surfaces and their Veech groups. Preprint, 2016, arXiv:1609.02130], the Disco surface. We show that this family displays various dynamical behaviours: it is generically dynamically trivial but for a Cantor set of parameters the leaves of the foliations accumulate to a (transversely) Cantor set. This study is achieved through analysis of the dynamics of the Veech group of this surface combined with a modified version of Rauzy induction in the context of affine interval exchange transformations.

Let ${\mathcal{D}}$ be the irreducible Hermitian symmetric domain of type $D_{2n}^{\mathbb{H}}$. There exists a canonical Hermitian variation of real Hodge structure ${\mathcal{V}}_{\mathbb{R}}$ of Calabi–Yau type over ${\mathcal{D}}$. This short note concerns the problem of giving motivic realizations for ${\mathcal{V}}_{\mathbb{R}}$. Namely, we specify a descent of ${\mathcal{V}}_{\mathbb{R}}$ from $\mathbb{R}$ to $\mathbb{Q}$ and ask whether the $\mathbb{Q}$-descent of ${\mathcal{V}}_{\mathbb{R}}$ can be realized as sub-variation of rational Hodge structure of those coming from families of algebraic varieties. When $n=2$, we give a motivic realization for ${\mathcal{V}}_{\mathbb{R}}$. When $n\geqslant 3$, we show that the unique irreducible factor of Calabi–Yau type in $\text{Sym}^{2}{\mathcal{V}}_{\mathbb{R}}$ can be realized motivically.

This paper contains two results on Hodge loci in $\mathsf{M}_{g}$. The first concerns fibrations over curves with a non-trivial flat part in the Fujita decomposition. If local Torelli theorem holds for the fibers and the fibration is non-trivial, an appropriate exterior power of the cohomology of the fiber admits a Hodge substructure. In the case of curves it follows that the moduli image of the fiber is contained in a proper Hodge locus. The second result deals with divisors in $\mathsf{M}_{g}$. It is proved that the image under the period map of a divisor in $\mathsf{M}_{g}$ is not contained in a proper totally geodesic subvariety of $\mathsf{A}_{g}$. It follows that a Hodge locus in $\mathsf{M}_{g}$ has codimension at least 2.

We consider compact Kählerian manifolds $X$ of even dimension 4 or more, endowed with a log-symplectic holomorphic Poisson structure $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1}$ which is sufficiently general, in a precise linear sense, with respect to its (normal-crossing) degeneracy divisor $D(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1})$. We prove that $(X,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1})$ has unobstructed deformations, that the tangent space to its deformation space can be identified in terms of the mixed Hodge structure on $H^{2}$ of the open symplectic manifold $X\setminus D(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1})$, and in fact coincides with this $H^{2}$ provided the Hodge number $h_{X}^{2,0}=0$, and finally that the degeneracy locus $D(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1})$ deforms locally trivially under deformations of $(X,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1})$.

We will develop a theory of multi-pointed non-commutative deformations of a simple collection in an abelian category, and construct relative exceptional objects and relative spherical objects in some cases. This is inspired by a work by Donovan and Wemyss.

Let $M$ be an irreducible holomorphic symplectic (hyperkähler) manifold. If $b_{2}(M)\geqslant 5$, we construct a deformation $M^{\prime }$ of $M$ which admits a symplectic automorphism of infinite order. This automorphism is hyperbolic, that is, its action on the space of real $(1,1)$-classes is hyperbolic. If $b_{2}(M)\geqslant 14$, similarly, we construct a deformation which admits a parabolic automorphism (and many other automorphisms as well).