Invariant distributions and time averages for horocycle flows (Q1428773): Difference between revisions

The horocycle flow of a closed surface \(S = \Gamma \backslash \mathbb H^2\) of constant negative curvature ist the flow on the unit tangent bundle \(\Gamma \backslash PSL (2, \mathbb R)= T^1S\) of \(S\) induced by the right action of the unipotent subgroup of \(PSL (2, \mathbb R)\) generated by \(U = \begin{pmatrix} 0 &1 \\ 0 &0\end{pmatrix} \in {\mathfrak{sl}} (2, \mathbb R)\). While the horocycle flow is uniquely ergodic it admits nontrivial invariant distributions which are not signed measures. The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the space \(D_U\) of these invariant distributions. It turns out that this space is related to the spectrum \(\sigma (\Delta)\) of the Laplacian \(\Delta\) on \(S\) in the following way. The distribution space \(D_U\) has infinite countable dimension, and there is a decomposition \[ D_U = \bigoplus_{\mu \in \sigma (\Delta)} D_\mu \oplus \bigoplus_{n \in \mathbb Z^+} D^d _n \] where for \(\mu = 0\) the space \(D_\mu\) is spanned by the Haar measure of \(PSL (2, \mathbb R)\). For \(0 < \mu < \frac{1}{4}\), the space \(D_\mu\) decomposes into \(D_\mu = D^+ _\mu \oplus D^- _\mu\) where \(D^\pm _\mu\) is contained in the dual \(W^{-s} (T^1 S)\) of the usual Sobolev space \(W^s (T^1 S)\) if and only if \(s > (1 \pm \sqrt{1-4 \mu} / 2)\) and the dimension of each subspace equals the multiplicity of \(\mu \in \sigma (\Delta)\). For \(\mu \geq \frac{1}{4}\) the space \(D_\mu\) is contained in \(W^{-s} (T^1 S)\) if and only if \(s > \frac{1}{2}\) and its dimension equals twice the multiplicity of \(\mu \in \sigma (\Delta)\). Moreover, for \(n \in \mathbb Z^+\), we have \(D^d _n \subset W^{-s} (T^1 S)\) if and only if \(s > n\) and its dimension is twice the dimension of the space of holomorphic sections of the \(n\)-th power of the canonical line bundle over \(S\). A similar statement also holds true for hyperbolic surfaces of finite volume. The authors use this result to derive distributional solutions to the cohomological equation \(U f = g\) for Sobolev functions \(g \in W^s (T^1 S)\) with zero average on \(T^1 S\) provided that \(s\) is sufficiently large. The proofs are based on representation theory for the group \(PSL (2, \mathbb R)\) and are quite technical.