Partially localized quasimodes in large subspaces (Q375520)

The Quantum Unique Ergodicity conjecture (QUE) of Rudnick and Sarnak states that the eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on Riemannian manifolds of negative curvature become equidistributed in the high-energy limit. In recent work, this conjecture was shown to hold in the more general setting of joint quasimodes on compact hyperbolic surfaces. More precisely, let \(M=\mathbb{H}/\Gamma\) equipped with the uniform probability measure \(dz\); here, \(\mathbb{H}\) denotes the upper-half plane and \(\Gamma\) a Fuchsian group. A function \(\psi\) is said to be an \(\omega(r)\)-quasimode with spectral parameter \(r\) if the estimate \[ \left \| \left( \Delta+\left( \frac{1}{4} +r^2 \right) \right) \psi \right\|_2 \leq r \omega(r) \|\psi\|_2 \] holds. For any constant \(c\), let \(S_c(r)\) be the space spanned by the quasimodes \(\psi \in C^\infty(S^*M)\) with spectral parameter in \([r-c,r+c]\). For every sequences \(\{r_j,\psi_j\}\) with \(\psi_j \in S_c(r_j)\) and \(r_j \to \infty\), one associates a sequence of measures \(\{\mu_j\}\) on \(S^*M\) obtained as the microlocal lift of the measure \(|\psi_j| \, dz\) on \(M\). The sequence \(\{\psi_j\}\) satisfies the QUE property if \(\{\mu_j\}\) converges weakly to the Liouville measure on \(S^*M\). A recent result of the author and Lindenstrauss shows that any sequence \(\{\psi_j\}\) of \(o(1)\)-quasimodes with \(\text{dim}(S_c(r_j))=o(r_j)\) for both the Laplacian and one Hecke operator satisfies the QUE property. The purpose of the paper is to show that the above result is sharp. Namely, if one assumes that \(\dim(S_c(r_j)) \geq cr_j\), then there exists a sequence \(\{\psi_j\}\) of quasimodes in \(S_c(r_j)\) such that its microlocal lifts converges to a measure with positive mass on a singular subset of \(S^*M\) of codimension one.