The distribution of gaps for saddle connection directions

Abstract: Motivated by the study of billiards in polygons, we prove fine results for the distribution of gaps of directions of saddle connections on translation surfaces. As an application we prove that for almost every holomorphic differential $\omega$ on a Riemann surface of genus $g \geq 2$ the smallest gap between saddle connection directions of length at most a fixed length decays faster than quadratically in the length. We also characterize the exceptional set: the decay rate is not faster than quadratic if and only if $\omega$ is a lattice surface.