Degenerations of SL(2,C) representations and Lyapunov exponents

Abstract

We study the asymptotic behavior of the Lyapunov exponent in a meromorphic family of random products of matrices in SL(2, C), as the parameter converges to a pole. We show that the blow-up of the Lyapunov exponent is governed by a quantity which can be interpreted as the non-Archimedean Lyapunov exponent of the family. We also describe the limit of the corresponding family of stationary measures on P 1 (C).