Effective counting of simple closed geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces

Measure-preserving transformations (28D05) One-parameter continuous families of measure-preserving transformations (28D10) Teichmüller theory for Riemann surfaces (30F60) Moduli of Riemann surfaces, Teichmüller theory (complex-analytic aspects in several variables) (32G15) Dynamical systems of geometric origin and hyperbolicity (geodesic and horocycle flows, etc.) (37D40)

Abstract: We prove a quantitative estimate, with a power saving error term, for the number of simple closed geodesics of length at most

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on a compact surface equipped with a Riemannian metric of negative curvature. The proof relies on the exponential mixing rate for the Teichm"{u}ller geodesic flow.

Review text

Given a compact hyperbolic surface \(S\), the problem of counting closed geodesics of at most a certain length has a long history, going back to J. Delsarte, with important contributions by A. Huber, G. Margulis, S. J. Patterson, and many others. The number of such closed geodesics is known to grow exponentially, and this asymptotics can be made effective by studying the exponential rate of mixing of the geodesic flow on the unit tangent bundle of the surface. The problem of counting \textit{simple} closed geodesics, that is, those which do not intersect themselves, is subtle, and building on polynomial upper and lower bounds shown by \textit{M. Rees} [Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 1, 461--488 (1981; Zbl 0539.58018)], \textit{M. Mirzakhani} proved in her thesis [Simple geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces and the volume of the moduli space of curves, PhD thesis, Harvard Univ. (2004)] an asymptotic growth rate for the number of simple closed geodesics of a given topological type on a hyperbolic surface, by relating it to a lattice point counting problem on the space of measured laminations \(\mathcal{ML}(S)\). This paper makes effective the counting of simple closed geodsics by effectivizing the lattice point counting on \(\mathcal{ML}(S)\), using the exponential mixing of the geodesic flow on the unit tangent bundle to the \textit{moduli space} of the surface \(S\), as shown by \textit{A. Avila} et al. [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 104, 143--211 (2006; Zbl 1263.37051)].

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