Invariant measures for the stable foliation on negatively curved periodic manifolds (Q2482855)

In this article the author classifies reversible measures for the stable foliation on manifolds which are infinite nonsimply connected covers of compact negatively curved manifolds. These results generalize results for compact surfaces with constant negative curvature. Let \(M_{0}\) denote a complete \(n\)-dimensional manifold with finite volume and sectional curvatures bounded between two negative constants. Let \(M\) denote a regular Riemannian cover of \(M_{0}\). Let \(\widetilde{M}\) denote the universal Riemannian cover of \(M\), and let \(\partial \widetilde{M}\) denote the boundary sphere at infinity. Fix a base point o of \(\widetilde{M}\). For each point \(\xi\) of \(\partial \widetilde{M}\) one obtains a \(C^{2}\) Busemann function \( B_{\xi}: \widetilde{M} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) given by \(B_{\xi}(x) = \lim_{y \rightarrow \xi}~d(x,y) - d(y,o)\), where \(y \in \widetilde{M}\). The level sets of \(B_{\xi}\) are the horospheres in \(\widetilde{M}\) determined by the point \(\xi \in \partial \widetilde{M}\). Let \(\Gamma\) denote the discrete group of isometries of \(\widetilde{M}\) that forms the deckgroup of the covering of \(M\) by \(\widetilde{M}\). For a real number \(\alpha\) a measure \(\widetilde{\nu}\) on \(\partial \widetilde{M}\) is said to be \(\alpha\)-conformal (relative to \(\Gamma\)) if \(\frac{d \nu \circ \gamma}{d \nu}(\xi) = e^{\alpha B_{\xi}(o,\gamma^{-1} o)}\) for all \(\gamma \in \Gamma\). If in addition \(\widetilde{\nu}\) cannot be decomposed as a convex combination of \(\alpha\)-conformal measures, then \(\widetilde{\nu}\) is said to be \(\alpha\)-conformal ergodic. An \(\alpha\)-conformal measure \(\widetilde{\nu}\) descends in a natural way to a measure \(\nu\) on the unit tangent bundle \(T_{1}M\) of \(M = \widetilde{M} / \Gamma\). Let \(L\) denote a second-order differential operator on a differentiable manifold \(V\). A measure \(m\) on \(V\) is said to be reversible (with respect to \(L\)) if \(\int_{V} (Lf)g~dm = \int_{V} f(Lg)~dm\) for all compactly supported \(C^{2}\) functions \(f,g\) on \( V\). A measure \(m\) is said to be harmonic (with respect to \(L\)) if \(\int_{V} Lf\, dm = 0\) for all compactly supported \(C^{2}\) functions \(f\) on \(M\). By considering compactly supported \(g\) that are constant on the support of \(f\) one sees that reversible implies harmonic. A reversible measure \(m\) is called extremal reversible if it cannot be decomposed into a nontrivial convex combination of reversible measures. A measure is called ergodic reversible if it is extremal reversible and cannot be decomposed into a nontrivial convex combination of harmonic measures. In this article the author considers the case that \(V = T_{1}M\), where \(M\) is as above. He considers the operators \(L = \Delta^{ss}\) or \(\Delta^{s} + \alpha X\), where \(\alpha\) is a real number, \(X\) denotes the vector field on \(T_{1}M\) whose flow is the geodesic flow and \(\Delta^{ss}\) (respectively \(\Delta^{s}\)) denotes the Laplacian along the strong stable (respectively stable) leaves of the corresponding foliations of \(T_{1}M\). The main result of the article is the following Theorem. Let \(M\) be a regular but nonsimply connected covering of a compact \(n\)-dimensional manifold \(M_{0}\) with sectional curvatures between two negative constants. Let \(\widetilde{\nu}\) be an \(\alpha\)-conformal measure on \(\partial \widetilde{M}\) for some real number \(\alpha\), and let \(m_{\nu}\) denote the corresponding measure on \(T_{1}M\). Then \(m_{\nu}\) is \(\Delta^{ss}\)-reversible ergodic and \(\Delta^{s} + \alpha X\) reversible ergodic. Conversely, any extremal \(\Delta^{ss}\)-reversible measure on \(T_{1}M\) is of that form for some real number \(\alpha\), and the same applies to any extremal \(\Delta^{s} + \alpha X\) reversible measure. In particular, an extremal \(\Delta^{ss}\) reversible measure is \(\Delta^{ss}\) ergodic and \(\Delta^{s} + \alpha X\) reversible ergodic for some real number \(\alpha\). The main result yields some powerful corollaries. One is the unique ergodicity result of Bowen and Marcus, which states that if \(M\) is a compact manifold whose sectional curvatures are strictly negative, then \(T_{1}M\) admits a unique \(\Delta^{ss}\) harmonic probability measure. A second application occurs in the case that \(M_{0}\) is compact and the deckgroup \(G\) of the infinite regular covering of \(M_{0}\) by \(M\) is abelian or nilpotent. In this situation there exist one-one correspondences between Radon measures on \(T_{1}M\) that are reversible and ergodic with respect to \(\Delta^{ss}\), Radon measures on \(T_{1}M\) that are reversible and ergodic with respect to \(\Delta^{s} + \alpha X\) for some real number \(\alpha\), measures on \(\partial \widetilde{M}\) that are \(\alpha\)-conformal for some real number \(\alpha\) and (exponential) homomorphisms \(e : G \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{+}\).