Asymptotic auto-correlation for closed geodesics (Q1366997)

In the study of closed geodesics on a negatively curved surface, one can associate to each closed geodesic \(\gamma\) the number of its self-intersections. In the extreme case of simple closed geodesics there will be no self-intersections and this number will therefore be zero. However, this situation is atypical [\textit{J. S. Birman} and \textit{C. Series}, Topology 24, 217-225 (1985; Zbl 0568.57006)] and most closed geodesics on a surface will have many self-intersections [\textit{M. Pollicott}, Isr. J. Math. 52, 209-224 (1985; Zbl 0582.58029)]. For compact \(n\)-dimensional manifolds with negative sectional curvature, when \(n\geq 3\), typically closed geodesics on such manifolds will have no self-intersections. In this situation the author investigates a more general notion of approximate self-intersections and derives asymptotic estimates on the average number of such approximate self-intersections of closed geodesics. If \(\gamma\) is a closed geodesic, \(\gamma: [O,T]\to M\), of length \(T= \lambda (\gamma)\) on a compact \(n\)-dimensional manifold \(M\) with negative curvature, one way to count the number of self-intersections is as follows. Let \(\Delta_T^{(2)}\) be the set \[ \Delta_T^{(2)} =\bigl\{(u,v) \in[O,T] \times[O,T]: u<v \bigr\}. \] Then the number of self-intersections for \(\gamma\) is the cardinality of the set \[ \bigl\{(t_1, t_2)\in \Delta_T^{(2)};\;\gamma (t_1) =\gamma(t_2) \bigr\}. \] For any \(\varepsilon>0\), the \(\varepsilon\)-approximate self-intersections are defined to be the connected components of \[ \Sigma= \biggl\{(t_1, t_2)\in \Delta_T^{(2)}: d\bigl(\gamma (t_1), \gamma(t_2) \bigr) <\varepsilon \biggr\} \] where \(d(.,.)\) is the distance function on \(M\). The author gets the following asymptotic estimates on the average number of such approximate self-intersections of closed geodesics. If \(\lambda (\gamma)\) denotes the length of a closed geodesic \(\gamma, k_\varepsilon (\gamma)\) the number of \(\varepsilon\)-approximate self-intersections and \(h>0\) is the topological entropy of the geodesic flow \(\varphi_t: SM\to SM\) on the unit tangent bundle \(SM\), then there exists \(C(\varepsilon) >0\) such that the asymptotic estimate for the number of \(\varepsilon\)-approximate self-intersections of closed geodesics whose length is in the interval \([T-\delta, T]\), for \(\delta>0\), is given by \[ \sum_{t- \delta\leq \lambda (\gamma) \leq T}{k_\varepsilon (\gamma) \over \lambda (\gamma)^2} \sim {C(\varepsilon) (1-e^{-h\delta}) \over hT} e^{hT}. \] Furthermore, for surfaces \((n=2), C(\varepsilon)\to C>0\) as \(\varepsilon\to 0\) an for \(n\geq 3\), \(C(\varepsilon)\to 0\) as \(\varepsilon\to 0\).