The pressure metric for Anosov representations

Abstract

Using the thermodynamics formalism, we introduce a notion of intersection for projective Anosov representations, show analyticity results for the intersection and the entropy, and rigidity results for the intersection. We use the renormalized intersection to produce a $Out(\Gamma)$-invariant Riemannian metric on the smooth points of the deformation space of irreducible, projective Anosov representations of a word hyperbolic group $\Gamma$ into $SL(m,R)$ whose Zariski closure contains a generic element. In particular, we produce mapping class group invariant Riemannian metrics on Hitchin components which restrict to the Weil--Petersson metric on the Fuchsian loci. Moreover, we produce $Out(\Gamma)$-invariant metrics on deformation spaces of convex cocompact representations into $PSL(2,C)$ and show that the Hausdorff dimension of the limit set varies analytically over analytic families of convex cocompact representations into any rank 1 semi-simple Lie group.