In SPCS6 and SPCS7, we studied a version of Avila-Viana symplicity criterion in the context of locally constant cocycles with values on
over shifts on countably many symbols, and the codification of the Kontsevich-Zorich cocycle over -orbits of origamis by a locally constant cocycle over a shift on countably many symbols.
In this way, we can get a simplicity criterion for the Kontsevich-Zorich cocycle over -orbits of origamis based on a “pinching” property and a “twisting” property (see this post). However, since the twisting property was stated in a “strong form” (in SPCS6), before extracting consequences from SPCS6 and SPCS7, we will spend the first half of today’s post with the study of several versions of the twisting properties.
1. Twisting properties
For the discussion of twisting properties, it is convenient to revisit a little bit the features of Noetherian topological spaces.
1.1. Noetherian spaces
Given as in (1), we recall the following notations (from SPCS6). For each
admissible,
denotes the Grassmanian of
-planes (isotropic or coisotropic depending on the group
).
Then, for each , we can define an hyperplane section as
Using these hyperplane sections, we have a (“pseudo-Zariski”) topology on by considering the coarsest topology such that the hyperplane sections are closed. Equivalently, we consider the topology on
whose closed sets are the (arbitrary) intersections of finite unions of hyperplane sections.
Notice that this topology is coarser than the Zariski topology: for instance, hyperplane sections are defined by degree one (linear) equations while Zariski topology involves taking equations of arbitrary degree (in other words, this topology is a sort of “Zariski topology for dummies” 🙂 … by the way, I would be happy to know if this topology has a “standard” name in the literature…). In particular, this topology is not Hausdorff as the same is true for the Zariski topology. As we’re going to see in a moment (see Example 1 below), this topology has the following property described in the definition below:
Definition 1 A topological space
is Noetherianif one of the following equivalent conditions is satisfied:
- (i) any decreasing sequence
of closed sets is stationary (in the sense that there exists
such that
for all
).
- (ii) any increasing sequence of open sets is stationary.
- (iii) every intersection of a family
of closed sets is the intersection of a finite subfamily
.
- (iv) every union of a family
of open sets is the union of a finite subfamily
.
Observe that any subspace of a Noetherian space is also Noetherian.
Example 1 It is a classical fact that the Zariski topology is Noetherian. In particular, since the topology on
associated to hyperplane sections is coarser than the Zariski topology, it is also Noetherian.
Definition 2 A Noetherian (topological) space
is irreducible if
is not the union of two non-trivial closed sets.
Proposition 3 A Noetherian space
can be written (decomposed) as a finite union
of irreducible closed sets
,
. Moreover, this decomposition is unique (up to permutation of
‘s) with the property
for
.
Proof: We will show only the existence part of this statement (leaving the uniqueness as an exercise). We argue by contradiction: otherwise, since is Noetherian, we could find
closed set that is not the finite union of irreducible sets and minimal (with respect to the inclusion) for this property. Of course, by construction,
is not irreducible. Hence, we can write
with
. By minimality,
and
where
and
are irreducible closed sets. So,
is also a finite union of irreducible closed sets, a contradiction.
Proposition 4 A finite product of Noetherian spaces is Noetherian. An open set of the product space is the finite union of products of open sets.
Remark 1 This proposition is not true if we replace “Noetherian space” by “Zariski topology”, i.e., the product of Zariski topologies is not the Zariski topology on the product. In particular, this is the reason why one does not insist on the product of Zariski topologies in Algebraic Geometry.
Proof: We illustrate the arguments in the case of the product of two Noetherian spaces ,
as the general case is similar.
It is not hard to see that our task is to prove that every union of products is the union of a finite subfamily. Suppose that this is not true. Then, for each
,
such that
,
for all
and
for all
.
Define and
. By construction,
. We claim that:
- (a) either there exists an infinite sequence
with
for all
- (b) or there exists an infinite sequence
with
for all
.
Here, we note that these possibilities are notmutually exclusive, i.e., it may happen that both of them occur. In any event, assuming momentarily that this claim is true, say (a) holds, it follows that is an infinite sequence of open sets such that
but
, a contradiction with the fact that
is Noetherian. In other words, we reduced the proof of the proposition to showing the our claim above.
We prove the claim by recurrence. Put and assume that the sets
are already constructed with the properties that
for all
, and
is infinite.
Consider the sets for
. We have two possible scenarios:
- there exists
such that
is infinite: in this case, we can define
and advance one step in our argument by recurrence;
- for all
the set
is finite: in this case, since
, one has that, for all
, the set
contains all but finitely many elements of
; then, we can pick
and we can define
and it is not hard to see that
satisfies item (b) of our claim.
In resume, the recursive argument above says that either we can advance indefinitely in the construction of the sequence fitting item (a) of our claim, or we get “blocked” at some stage
but then we can produce in “one shot” the sequence
meeting the requirements of item (b) of our claim. Of course, this proves the claim and thus the proof of the proposition is complete.
Proposition 5 A closed irreducible set of
has the form
where
are closed irreducible sets.
Proof: By the previous proposition, one can check that closed sets of are finite unions of products of closed sets of
‘s. Thus, the irreducible closed sets of
are precisely the products
of irreducible closed sets
.
After this little digression on Noetherian spaces, we can pass to twisting properties.
1.2. Twisting monoids
Let be a monoid acting on a Noetherian space
by homeomorphisms. Here, of course, our main example is:
Example 2 Given a countable family of matrices
,
, with
as in (1), we can consider the natural action of the monoid
generated by
acting on the Grassmanian
equipped with the Noetherian topology associated to hyperplane sections.
Proof: Otherwise, would be a strictly decreasing infinite sequence of closed sets of the Noetherian space
.
Proposition 7 If
,
is the (minimal) decomposition of the closed set
into irreducible closed sets
, and
, then
permutes the irreducible pieces
.
Proof: This follows from the uniqueness part of Proposition 3.
Proposition 8 Let
be irreducible. Then, the following properties are equivalent:
- (i) there exists no non-trivial closed invariant set by
- (ii) for every
and
open set, there exists
such that
- (iii) for every
,
and
open set, there exists
such that
for all
- (iii)’ for every
,
and
open sets, there exists
such that
for all
Proof: The equivalence between and
follows from the fact that the monoid
also acts (diagonally) on the Noetherian space
(see Proposition 4).
Also, it is clear that , so that it remains only to prove that
implies
.
Suppose that holds but
is not true. Then, we can find
, a point
and
with
a non-trivial open set of
such that the (diagonal) action of
on
satisfies:
for all .
Observe that, by Proposition 4, is a (non-trivial) open set of
. So,
is a closed set such that
In particular, is a closed set such that
for all
. By Proposition 6, it follows that
for all
.
Now, we write the decomposition of
into irreducible closed sets
. By Proposition 5,
where are irreducible closed subsets of
. Since
for all
, we have that, by Proposition 7, every
permutes the irreducible closed sets
.
Define
Here, we used that to ensure
. Because
acts by homeomorphisms and
permutes the irreducible closed subsets
, any
is sent by
into some
, and hence
for every . On the other hand, since
is irreducible (by hypothesis),
, a contradiction with the statement of item
.
In view of Example 2 and the discussion in SPCS6 (related to Avila-Viana simplicity criterion), it is natural to call a (“strong form” of) twisting condition.
Remark 2 The twisting condition (i.e.,
or
) is satisfied for the monoid
if and only if it is satisfied for the group
generated by
(e.g., this follows immediately from the statement of item
).
1.3. Twisting with respect to pinching matrices
Coming back to the context of Example 2 (and using the notations from SPCS6), assume that we have a word such that
is simple (i.e., pinching).
Proposition 9 The twisting condition is realized if and only if for every admissible
there exists
such that the matrix
verifies
for every
-invariant
and
(that is,
and
).
For later use, we will abbreviate the second statement in this proposition by saying that is twisting with respect to
.
Remark 3 It can be checked that
isotropic is
-invariant (i.e.,
) if and only if
is generated by the sum of eigenvectors
of
with eigenvalues
such that
and
for every
. In particular, there are only finitely many
with
, and hence the proposition above says that, in the presence of a pinching matrix
, the (strong form of) twisting condition (an “infinitary” statement about all
and
) can be reduced to the property of twisting with respect to
(a “finitary” statement as it concerns only the finitely many [isotropic and coisotropic]
-invariant subspaces).
Proof: Of course, “twisting with respect to ” is a necessary condition. Conversely, given
and
, we are searching for a matrix
such that
for all
. We affirm that it suffices to take
for
sufficiently large: indeed, as
, we have
converges (in the usual topology) to some
with
;
converges (also in the usual topology) to
with
.
It follows that, by assumption, for
(as
and
are
-invariant). Since these transversality conditions
are open, one gets that
for
sufficiently large (depending on
and
), that is,
for
sufficiently large.
At this stage, we are ready to state our main result towards the verification (based on Galois theory) of the pinching and twisting conditions for the Kontsevich-Zorich cocycle over the -orbits of square-tiled surfaces.
2. Sufficient conditions for pinching and twisting in the case of origamis
Theorem 10 (M., Möller, Yoccoz) Suppose
. Assume also that there exists
and
such that
- (i) the eigenvalues of
are real
- (ii) the Galois group
of the characteristic polynomial
of
is the largest possible, that is,
- (iii)
and
don’t share a common non-trivial invariant subspace
Then, the pinching and twisting conditions are satisfied.
Remark 4 Concerning the Galois group
(see item
), since
is symplectic,
is a reciprocal polynomial (i.e.,
), so that its roots have the form
. Thus, by saying that
is the largest possible, we want to be able make all permutations of roots of
respecting the symplectic constraint/symmetry, that is, we want
to permute all pairs
,
(this gives the
factor of
), and for each given pair
we want
to permute
and
without touching the other pairs (this gives the
factor of
).
Remark 5 The proof of this result is somewhat long (as it involves considering several cases), and hence the general plan for the next two lectures (March 7 and 14) by J.-C. Yoccoz is the following: for the next lecture (March 7), we will see some ideas of the proof of the theorem above and for the final lecture (March 14) we will see some applications of this result to the case of origamis in the stratum
(of genus
square-tiled surfaces with a single zero of order
) where we will take
and we will consider matrices on
.
The rest of this post concerns some preparatory facts towards the proof of this theorem.
We begin by noticing that the matrix verifies the pinching condition: indeed, since the Galois group
of
is the largest possible, we have that
is irreducible, and thus its roots are simple. By the assumption
, all roots
,
, of
are real, so that the pinching condition is violated by
precisely when there are
such that
. However, this is impossible because
is the largest possible: for instance, since
, we have an element of
fixing
and exchanging
and
; applying this element to the relation
, we would get that
and
, so that
a contradiction with the fact that
is irreducible.
Remark 6 Concerning the applications of this theorem to the case of origamis, we observe that item
is satisfied whenever the splitting fields
and
of the characteristic polynomials of
and
are disjointas extensions of
, i.e.,
. Indeed, if
is invariant by
and
, one has that
is generated by eigenvectors of
(as
is pinching, i.e.,
has simple spectrum), so that
is defined over
, and
is invariant by
, so that
is also defined over
.
Since
and
are disjoint, it follows that
is defined over
. But this is impossible as
doesn’t have rational invariant subspaces (by
and
).
Once we know that the matrix satisfies the pinching condition, the proof of Theorem 10 is reduced to checking the twisting condition, and, by Proposition 9, it suffices to check the condition of twisting with respect to the pinching matrix
. Keeping this goal in mind, we introduced the following notations.
We denote by the set of roots of the polynomial
(so that
), for each
, we put
, and we define
(so that
).
Given , let
, resp.
be the set whose elements are subsets
of
, resp.
with
elements, and let
be the set whose elements are subsets
of
with
elements such that
is injective. In other words,
consist of those
such that if
, then
.
Next, we make a choice of basis of as follows. For each
, we select an eigenvector
of
associated to
, i.e.,
. In particular,
is defined over
). Then, we assume that the choices of
‘s are coherent with the action of the Galois group
, i.e.,
(and thus
) for each
. In this way, for each
, we can associated a multivector
(using the natural order of the elements of
).
By definition, where
.
From our assumptions and
on
, we have that:
,
, is a basis of
- the subspace generated by
is isotropic if and only if
Also, by an elementary (linear algebra) computation, it is not hard to check that a matrix is twisting with respect to
if and only if
for all , where
are the coefficients of the matrix
in the basis
.
In order to organize our discussions, we observe that the condition (2) can be used to define an oriented graph as follows. Its vertices
are
, and we have an arrow from
to
if and only if
. In this language, (2) corresponds to the fact that
is a complete graph.
Of course, the verification of the completeness of is not simple in general, and hence it could be interesting to look for more soft properties of
ensuring completeness of
for some matrix
constructed as a product of powers of
and
. Here, we take our inspiration from Dynamical Systems and we introduce the following classical notion:
Definition 11
is mixing if there exists
such that for all
we can find an oriented path in
of length
going from
to
.
Here, we note that it is important in this definition that we can connect two arbitrary vertices by a path of length exactly (and not of length
). For instance, the figure below shows a connected graph that is not mixing because all paths connecting
to
have odd length while all paths connecting
to
have even length.
As the reader can guess by now, mixing is a soft property ensuring completeness of a “related” graph. This is the content of the following proposition:
Proposition 12 Suppose that
is mixing with respect to an integer
. Then, there is a finite family of hyperplanes
of
such that, for any
, the matrix
satisfies (2) for all sufficiently large
.
We close this post with the proof of this proposition.
Proof: To alleviate the notation, let’s put . By definition,
where and
.
Our goal is to prove that . Of course, even though
was expressed as a sum of exponentials with non-vanishing coefficients, there is a risk of getting non-trivial cancelations so that the resulting expression vanishes. The idea is to show that
can be chosen suitably to avoid such cancelations, and the heart of this argument is the observation that, for
, the linear forms
and
are distinct. Indeed, given
and
,
, we claim that the following coefficients of
and
differ:
Otherwise, we would have a relation
But, since , we have that if
then
. In particular, by taking an element
, and by considering an element
of the Galois group
with
and
otherwise, one would get on one hand that
but, on the other hand,
so that or
, a contradiction in any event (as
is real and
by the pinching conditions on
).
Now, we define . Since
and
are distinct linear forms for
, it follows that
is a hyperplane. Because there are only finitely many paths
of length
on
, the collection of
corresponds to a finite family of hyperplanes
.
Finally, we complete the proof by noticing that if , then
for sufficiently large because the coefficients
are mutually distinct.
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