Degeneration of Hitchin representations along internal sequences

Abstract

Using the work of Bonahon-Dreyer and Fock-Goncharov, one can construct a real-analytic parameterization for the PSL(n,R) Hitchin component of a surface S, that is explicitly analogous to the Fenchel-Nielsen coordinates on the Teichmuller space of S. Given a Hitchin representation, we give a lower bound on the "length" of any closed curve on S in terms of the parameters describing this representation. We then show that this lower bound is good enough to produce large families of sequences in the Hitchin component along which the topological entropy converges to 0.