Dynamics of the mapping class group on the moduli of a punctured sphere with rational holon.pdfVIP

DYNAMICS OF THE MAPPING CLASS GROUP ON 3 THE MODULI OF A PUNCTURED SPHERE WITH 0 RATIONAL HOLONOMY 0 2 v JOSEPH P. PREVITE AND EUGENE Z. XIA o N 1 2 Abstract. Let M be a four-holed sphere and Γ the mapping ] class group of M fixing the boundary ∂M . The group Γ acts on S MB (SL(2, C)) = Hom+ (π1(M ), SL(2, C))/ SL(2, C) which is the B D space of completely reducible SL(2, C)-gauge equivalence classes of h. flat SL(2, C)-connections on M with fixed holonomy B on ∂M . t Let B ∈ (−2, 2)4 and MB be the compact component of the a real points of MB (SL(2, C)). These points correspond to SU(2)- m representations or SL(2, R)-representations. The Γ-action preserves [ MB and we study the topological dynamics of the Γ-action on MB 4 1 and show that for a dense set of holonomy B ∈ (−2, 2) , the Γ- v orbits are dense in MB . We also produce a class of representations 3 ρ ∈ Hom+ (π1(M ), SL(2, R)) such that the Γ-orbit of [ρ] is finite in 7 B the compact component of MB (SL(2, R)), but ρ(π1(M )) is dense 3 1 in SL(2, R). 1 3 0 / h 1. Introduction t a Let M be a 4-holed sphere and {γ , γ ,