Cross ratios, Anosov representations and the energy functional on Teichmüller space
We study two classes of linear representations of a surface group: Hitchin and maximal symplectic representations. We relate them to cross ratios and thus deduce that they are displacing which means that their translation lengths are roughly controlled by the translations lengths on the Cayley graph. As a consequence, we show that the mapping class group acts properly on the space of representations and that the energy functional associated to such a representation is proper. This implies the existence...