Abstract
A holomorphic 1-form on a compact Riemann surface S naturally defines a flat metric on S with cone-type singularities. We present the following surprising phenomenon: having found a geodesic segment (saddle connection) joining a pair of conical points one can find with a nonzero probability another saddle connection on S having the same direction and the same length as the initial one. A similar phenomenon is valid for the families of parallel closed geodesics.
We give a complete description of all possible configurations of parallel saddle connections (and of families of parallel closed geodesics) which might be found on a generic flat surface S. We count the number of saddle connections of length less than L on a generic flat surface S; we also count the number of admissible configurations of pairs (triples,...) of saddle connections; we count the analogous numbers of configurations of families of closed geodesics. By the previous result of [EMa] these numbers have quadratic asymptotics c·(πL2). Here we explicitly compute the constant c for a configuration of every type. The constant c is found from a Siegel–Veech formula.
To perform this computation we elaborate the detailed description of the principal part of the boundary of the moduli space of holomorphic 1-forms and we find the numerical value of the normalized volume of the tubular neighborhood of the boundary. We use this for evaluation of integrals over the moduli space.
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Eskin, A., Masur, H. & Zorich, A. Moduli spaces of Abelian differentials: The principal boundary, counting problems, and the Siegel–Veech constants. Publ. Math. 97, 61–179 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10240-003-0015-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10240-003-0015-1