Abelianization of Fuchsian Systems on a 4-punctured sphere and applications

In this paper we consider special linear Fuchsian systems of rank $2$ on a $4-$punctured sphere and the corresponding parabolic structures. Through an explicit abelianization procedure we obtain a $2-$to$-1$ correspondence between flat line bundle connections on a torus and these Fuchsian systems. This naturally equips the moduli space of flat $SL(2,\mathbb C)-$connections on a $4-$punctured sphere with a new set of Darboux coordinates. Furthermore, we apply our theory to give a complex analytic proof of Witten's formula for the symplectic volume of the moduli space of unitary flat connections on the $4-$punctured sphere.Comment: 23 pages, comments are welcom

Constrained Willmore Tori and Elastic Curves in 2-Dimensional Space Forms

In this paper we consider two special classes of constrained Willmore tori in the 3-sphere. The first class is given by the rotation of closed elastic curves in the upper half plane - viewed as the hyperbolic plane - around the x-axis. The second is given as the preimage of closed constrained elastic curves, i.e., elastic curve with enclosed area constraint, in the round 2-sphere under the Hopf fibration. We show that all conformal types can be isometrically immersed into S^3 as constrained Willmore (Hopf) tori and write down all constrained elastic curves in H^2 and S^2 in terms of the Weierstrass elliptic functions. Further, we determine the closing condition for the curves and compute the Willmore energy and the conformal type of the resulting tori.Comment: 23 pages, 2 figure

Towards a constrained Willmore conjecture

We give an overview of the constrained Willmore problem and address some conjectures arising from partial results and numerical experiments. Ramifications of these conjectures would lead to a deeper understanding of the Willmore functional over conformal immersions from compact surfaces.Comment: 17page