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Anosov mapping class actions on the $SU(2)$-representation variety of a punctured torus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 1998

RICHARD J. BROWN
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA (e-mail: rbrown@math.umd.edu)

Abstract

Recently, Goldman [2] proved that the mapping class group of a compact surface $S$, ${\it MCG}(S)$, acts ergodically on each symplectic stratum of the Poisson moduli space of flat $ S(2)$-bundles over $S$, $X(S, S(2))$. We show that this property does not extend to that of cyclic subgroups of ${\it MCG}(S)$, for $S$ a punctured torus. The symplectic leaves of $X(T^2-pt., SU(2))$ are topologically copies of the 2-sphere $S^2$, and we view mapping class actions as a continuous family of discrete Hamiltonian dynamical systems on $S^2$. These deformations limit to finite rotations on the degenerate leaf corresponding to $-{\rm Id}$. boundary holonomy. Standard KAM techniques establish that the action is not ergodic on the leaves in a neighborhood of this degenerate leaf.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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