Resonances and density bounds for convex co-compact congruence subgroups of \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb Z)\) (Q314413)

Let \(\Gamma\) be a non-elementary, convex-cocompact subgroup of \(\mathrm{SL}_2({\mathbb Z})\). For a square-free integer \(q\) let \(\Gamma(q)\) denote the congruence subgroup modulo \(q\), i.e., the kernel of the reduction map \(\Gamma\to\mathrm{SL}_2({\mathbb Z}/q{\mathbb Z})\). The hyperbolic Laplacian \(\Delta\) acts on the infinite area hyperbolic surface \(X_q=\Gamma(q)\backslash {\mathbb H}^2\). It has only finitely many eigenvalues there and a continuous spectrum otherwise. The resolvent \(R(s)=(\Delta-s(1-s))^{-1}\) is defined for \(\mathrm{Re}(s)>0\) and extends to a meromorphic function on the plane. The poles of this function, which do not come from an eigenvalue of \(\Delta\), are called \textit{resonances}. Let \(\mathcal R_q\) be the set of resonances of \(X_q\) and let \(N_q(r)=\#\{ s\in R_q: |s|\leq r\}\) be the counting function. The first result of the paper under review is that there exist constants \(C_0,T_0>0\) such that for all \(\varepsilon>0\), all \(q\geq q_0(\varepsilon)\) and all \(T\geq T_0\) one has the lower bound \[ N_q(T(\log q)^\varepsilon)\geq C_0T^2q^3. \] To formulate the second result, let \(0<\delta<1\) denote the Hausdorff-dimension of the limit set of \(\Gamma\). This is also the critical exponent of the Poincaré series \[ P_\Gamma(s)=\sum_{\gamma\in\Gamma}e^{-sd(\gamma z,w)}, \] where \(d\) denotes the hyperbolic distance. For \(\sigma>\delta/2\) let \[ M_q(\sigma,T)=\# \{ s\in R_q: \sigma\leq \mathrm{Re}(s)\leq\delta\text{ and } |\mathrm{Im}(s)-T|\leq 1\}. \] The second result is that there exists \(m_0(\sigma)\) such that for all \(T\geq 1\) and \(q\) large one has \[ M_q(\sigma,T)\leq m_0 T^{\delta+\tau_1(\sigma)}q^{3+\tau_2(\sigma)}, \] where \(\tau_j(\sigma)<0\) on \((\frac\delta 2,\delta]\), and \(\tau_j\) is strictly convex and decreasing for \(j=1,2\). Unfortunately, the exposition of the current paper suffers from inaccuracies, but the results appear to be correct.