Amenable covers for surfaces and growth of closed geodesics (Q2404646)

Let \(M\) be a compact surface with a smooth Riemannian metric and let \(\pi( M,T)\) denote the number of closed geodesics of length at most \(T\). A dynamical perspective then comes from considering the geodesic flow \(\phi _t: SM \to SM\) on the three-dimensional unit tangent bundle \(SM\) for \(M\). For compact surfaces of negative curvature the topological entropy \(h(\phi)\) of the associated geodesic flow corresponds to the growth rate of the number \(\pi ( M, T )\). In the present article, the author shows that the rate of growth of closed geodesics (up to translation) on an amenable cover of a compact surface is the same as that on the underlying space. This generalizes the result for negatively curved surfaces