Michael Wolf - Sheared Pleated surfaces and Limiting Configurations for Hitchin's equations
Channel: UMD Mathematics
Date: 2017-09-11

Michael Wolf
Sheared Pleated surfaces and Limiting Configurations for Hitchin's equations

A recent work by Mazzeo-Swoboda-Weiss-Witt describes a stratum of the frontier of the space of SL(2,C) surface group representations in terms of 'limiting configurations' which solve a degenerate version of Hitchin's equations on a Riemann surface. We interpret these objects in (a mapping class group invariant way in) terms of the hyperbolic geometric objects of shearings of pleated surfaces. We study limits of opers in this perspective. This is joint with A. Ott, J. Swoboda, and R. Wentworth.