Notes on a paper of Mess

These notes are a companion to the article "Lorentz spacetimes of constant curvature" by Geoffrey Mess, which was first written in 1990 but never published. Mess' paper will appear together with these notes in a forthcoming issue of Geometriae Dedicata.Comment: 26 page

Cubic Differentials in the Differential Geometry of Surfaces

We discuss the local differential geometry of convex affine spheres in \re^3 and of minimal Lagrangian surfaces in Hermitian symmetric spaces. In each case, there is a natural metric and cubic differential holomorphic with respect to the induced conformal structure: these data come from the Blaschke metric and Pick form for the affine spheres and from the induced metric and second fundamental form for the minimal Lagrangian surfaces. The local geometry, at least for main cases of interest, induces a natural frame whose structure equations arise from the affine Toda system for $\mathfrak a^{(2)}_2$. We also discuss the global theory and applications to representations of surface groups and to mirror symmetry.Comment: corrected published editio

Lengthening deformations of singular hyperbolic tori

Let $S$ be a torus with a hyperbolic metric admitting one puncture or cone singularity. We describe which infinitesimal deformations of $S$ lengthen (or shrink) all closed geodesics. We also study how the answer degenerates when $S$ becomes Euclidean, i.e. very small.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. To appear in: Annales de la facult\'e des sciences de Toulouse (volume dedicated to Michel Boileau's sixtieth birthday