The Sunada construction and the simple length spectrum (Q357859)

Two manifolds are said to be (simple) iso-length spectral if they have the same set of all lengths of (simple) closed geodesics counted with multiplicities. \textit{T. Sunada} [Ann. Math. (2) 121, 169--186 (1985; Zbl 0585.58047)] provided certain covering method to construct iso-length spectral manifolds which are frequently not isometric. Let \(M\) be a closed Riemannian manifold with a surjective homomorphism from its fundamental group onto a finite group \(G\). Sunada showed that if \(H, K\subset G\) are subgroups such that each conjugacy class of \(G\) meets \(H\) and \(K\) in the same number of elements, then the finite covering spaces \(M_H\) and \(M_K\) corresponding to the subgroups \(H\) and \(K\) are iso-length spectral. In this paper, the author proves that certain of Sunada's examples of iso-length spectral hyperbolic surfaces are not simple iso-length spectral. More precisely, he shows that there are exactly four nonsimple closed geodesics on \(M_H\) and four simple closed geodesics on \(M_K\) with the same length.