GL2R orbit closures in hyperelliptic components of strata

Source abstract

The object of this article is to study GL2R orbit closures in hyperelliptic components of strata of Abelian differentials. The main result is that all higher-rank affine invariant submanifolds in hyperelliptic components are branched covering constructions; that is, every translation surface in the affine invariant submanifold covers a translation surface in a lower genus hyperelliptic component of a stratum of Abelian differentials. This result implies the finiteness of algebraically primitive Teichmüller curves in all hyperelliptic components for genus greater than two. A classification of all GL2R orbit closures in hyperelliptic components of strata (up to computing connected components and up to finitely many nonarithmetic rank one orbit closures) is provided. Our main theorem resolves a pair of conjectures of Mirzakhani in the case of hyperelliptic components of moduli space.