Time-changes of horocycle flows (Q456684)

In the ergodic theory of flows it is often important to consider robustness of certain behaviors (speed of mixing, speed of equidistribution) under (smooth) time changes. A classic result in this direction is Marcus's theorem on mixing of horocycle flow on surfaces of variable negative curvature (or, equivalently, for time changes for horocycle flow under appropriate smoothness conditions). In the paper under review, the authors prove sharp results on speed of mixing and speed of equidistribution for time changes of horocycle flows on compact hyperbolic surfaces. Several results on the spectrum of the flow are also obtained, in particular that the spectral measure is absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue. The mixing and equidistribution results are obtained via a quantitative strengthening of Marcus's argument.