Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

For about 2 decades the horocycle flow on strata of translation surfaces was studied, very successfully, in analogy with unipotent flows on homogeneous spaces, which by work of Ratner, Margulis, Dani and many others, have striking rigidity properties. In the past decade Eskin-Mirzakhani and Eskin-Mirzakhani-Mohammadi proved some analogous rigidity results for SL(2,R) and the full upper triangular subgroup on strata of translation surfaces. This talk will begin by introducing ergodic theory and translation surfaces. Then it will describe some of the previously mentioned rigidity theorems before moving on to its goal, that many such rigidity results fail for the horocycle flow on strata of translation surfaces. Time permitting we will also describe a rigidity result for special sub-objects in strata of translation surfaces. This will include joint work with Osama Khalil, John Smillie, Barak Weiss and Florent Ygouf.