Connected components of strata of quadratic differentials over Teichmuller space

Abstract

In this paper, we study connected components of strata of the space of quadratic differentials lying over $\T_g$. We use certain general properties of sections of line bundles to put a upper bound on the number of connected components, and a generalized version of the Gauss map as an invariant to put a lower bound on the number of such components. For strata with sufficiently many zeroes of the same order we can state precisely the number of components.