Translation covers of some triply periodic Platonic surfaces

Abstract

We study translation covers of several triply periodic polyhedral surfaces that are intrinsically Platonic. We describe their affine symmetry groups and compute the quadratic asymptotics for counting saddle connections and cylinders, including the count of cylinders weighted by area. The mathematical study of triply periodic surfaces was initiated by Novikov, motivated by the study of electron transport. The surfaces we consider are of particular interest as they admit several different explicit geometric and algebraic descriptions, as described, for example, in the second author’s thesis.