Some quantitative versions of Ratner's mixing estimates (Q380970)

The author presents some quantitative versions of \textit{M. Ratner}'s estimates for the rate of mixing of geodesic flows as stated in [Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 7, 267--288 (1987; Zbl 0623.22008)]. It was known that Ratner's estimates could be made more explicit, but no one had done this previously. Let \(T : \mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R}) \rightarrow \mathrm{U}(\mathcal{H})\) be a unitary representation, where \(\mathcal{H}\) is a complex, separable Hilbert space. For \(p \geq 0\) let \(K(T,p)\) denote those vectors \(v \in \mathcal{H}\) such that \(\theta \rightarrow T(r(\theta))(v)\) is \(C^{p}\), where \(r(\theta)\) denotes the \(2\times 2\) rotation matrix with positive rotation angle \(\theta\). For \(v\), \(w\in \mathcal{H}\) let \(B(t) = \langle v, T(a(t)) w \rangle\), where \(a(t)\) is the \(2\times 2\) diagonal matrix with entries \(e^{t}, e^{-t}\). The two main results of the article are highly explicit estimates for \(|B(t)|\) when \(v\), \(w\in K(T,3)\), but these estimates are not easy to summarize. In the first result, \(T\) is assumed to be nontrivial and irreducible while in the second result \(T\) is assumed to have no nonzero invariant vectors. As a corollary the author obtains an estimate of \(|B(t)|\) in the case when \(T\) is the regular representation on \(\mathcal{H} = L^{2}(S)\), where \(S\) is a surface with finite area and constant negative curvature. Let \(T : \mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb R) \rightarrow \mathrm{U}(\mathcal{H})\) be a nontrivial irreducible representation. For each integer \(n\) let \(\mathcal{H}_{n} = \{v \in \mathcal{H} : T(r(\theta))v = e^{in \theta}v \}\) for all \(\theta \in \mathbb R\). Each space \(\mathcal{H}_{n}\) has dimension 0 or 1, and in the latter case we let \(\varphi_{n}\) be a unit vector spanning \(\mathcal{H}_{n}\). The nonzero vectors \(\{\varphi_{n} \}\) form an orthonormal basis of \(\mathcal{H}\). For integers \(n\), \(m\) with \(\varphi_{n}, \varphi_{m}\) nonzero, let \(B_{n,m}(t) = \langle \varphi_{n} , T(a(t))\varphi_{m} \rangle\). The author derives an estimate for the rate of decay of \(|B_{n,m}(t)|\) as \(t \rightarrow \infty\). This estimate plays an important role in the estimates of the two main results.