Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2021
We associate a flow
$\phi $
with a solution of the vortex equations on a closed oriented Riemannian 2-manifold
$(M,g)$
of negative Euler characteristic and investigate its properties. We show that
$\phi $
always admits a dominated splitting and identify special cases in which
$\phi $
is Anosov. In particular, starting from holomorphic differentials of fractional degree, we produce novel examples of Anosov flows on suitable roots of the unit tangent bundle of
$(M,g)$
.