Explicit Teichmüller curves with complemetary series

Abstract

We construct an explicit family of arithmetic Teichmüller curves $\mathcal{C}_{2k}$, $k\in\mathbb{N}$, supporting $\textrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$-invariant probabilities $μ_{2k}$ such that the associated $\textrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$-representation on $L^2(\mathcal{C}_{2k}, μ_{2k})$ has complementary series for every $k\geq 3$. Actually, the size of the spectral gap along this family goes to zero. In particular, the Teichmüller geodesic flow restricted to these explicit arithmetic Teichmüller curves $\mathcal{C}_{2k}$ has arbitrarily slow rate of exponential mixing.

46 pages, 10 figures. Final version (based on the referee report). To appear in Bulletin SMF