Spectral theory of Laplacians for Hecke groups with primitive character (Q5953840)

In the spectral theory of cofinite Fuchsian and Kleinian groups with parabolic elements it is an open question whether the point or the continuous spectrum dominates. At first it was expected that it would be the point spectrum that was more significant; this is the case in arithmetic groups. In 1985 \textit{R. S. Phillips} and \textit{P. Sarnak} [Invent. Math. 80, 339-364 (1985; Zbl 0558.10017)] gave a very elegant perturbation argument which changed this perception. The question is still open and debatable. In this paper the authors take up Phillip and Sarnak's argument; they apply it to the variation of certain characters of a congruence subgroup of the modular group. In this case the details are rather different than before. Many aspects of the basic theory needed are not well documented, and the authors remedy this state of affairs here. As before, the question as to whether an eigenvalue becomes a resonance depends on the non-vanishing of a certain integral. In the situations investigated here this integral is one which can be studied by the Hadamard method. Consequently the authors can prove the unconditional transformation of many eigenfunctions into resonances from a situation where the discrete spectrum dominates. Whether the proportion is positive depends on certain conjectures about the multiplicities of the eigenvalues; whereas these are plausible, they are still far from proved.