Simple Length Rigidity for Hitchin Representations

Abstract

We show that a Hitchin representation is determined by the spectral radii of the images of simple, non-separating closed curves. As a consequence, we classify isometries of the intersection function on Hitchin components of dimension 3 and on the self-dual Hitchin components in all dimensions. As an important tool in the proof, we establish a transversality result for positive quadruples of flags.