Veech groups without parabolic elements

We prove that a ``bouillabaisse'' surface (translation surface which has two transverse parabolic elements) has totally real trace field. As a corollary, non trivial Veech groups which have no parabolic elements do exist. The proof follows Veech's viewpoint on Thurston's construction of pseudo-Anosov diffeomorphisms.Comment: 7 pages, Corrected typos, to appear in Duke Mathematical Journa

On the Hausdorff dimension of the Rauzy gasket

In this paper, we prove that the Hausdorff dimension of the Rauzy gasket is less than 2. By this result, we answer a question addressed by Pierre Arnoux. Also, this question is a very particular case of the conjecture stated by S.P. Novikov and A. Ya. Maltsev in 2003.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figure

Diophantine approximation on Veech surfaces

We show that Y. Cheung's general $Z$-continued fractions can be adapted to give approximation by saddle connection vectors for any compact translation surface. That is, we show the finiteness of his Minkowski constant for any compact translation surface. Furthermore, we show that for a Veech surface in standard form, each component of any saddle connection vector dominates its conjugates. The saddle connection continued fractions then allow one to recognize certain transcendental directions by their developments