Affine Manifolds and Zero Lyapunov Exponents in Genus 3

Abstract

In previous work, the author fully classified orbit closures in genus three with maximally many (four) zero Lyapunov exponents of the Kontsevich-Zorich cocycle. In this paper, we prove that there are no higher dimensional orbit closures in genus three with any zero Lyapunov exponents. Furthermore, if a Teichm\"uller curve in genus three has two zero Lyapunov exponents in the Kontsevich-Zorich cocycle, then it lies in the principal stratum and has at most quadratic trace field. Moreover, there can be at most finitely many such Teichm\"uller curves.