Unique ergodicity of the horocycle flow of a higher genus compact surface with no conjugate points and continuous Green bundles (Q6091219)

\textit{H. Furstenberg} [Lect. Notes Math. 318, 95--115 (1973; Zbl 0256.58009)] showed that the horocycle flow on a compact hyperbolic surface is uniquely ergodic, and this was extended to compact surfaces with variable negative curvature by \textit{B. Marcus} [Isr. J. Math. 21, 133--144 (1975; Zbl 0314.58013)]. The arguments use uniform hyperbolicity of the geodesic flow on the surface, and in particular a parametrization of the horocycle flow that is expanded uniformly by the geodesic flow. The main result here extends this to orientable compact surfaces of higher genus without conjugate points under a condition on the Green bundle. This includes, for example, non-flat compact surfaces with non-positive curvature and some widely studied examples of surfaces with embedded flat cylinders. A key difficulty in obtaining these results is the presence of `strips', families of geodesics that stay close together in the past and in the future in the universal cover of the manifold which means there is no expansion or contraction of horospheres under the geodesic.