Representation growth of Fuchsian groups and modular forms (Q6975227)

Let \(\Gamma = \langle x_1, y_1, \ldots , x_g, y_g,z_1, \ldots z_r | z_1^{a_1}, \ldots , z_r^{a_r}, [x_1,y_1] \cdots [x_g,y_g]z_1 \cdots z_r\rangle\) be a compact and oriented Fuchsian group; here \(a_1, \ldots a_r\) is a fixed (possibly empty) non-decreasing sequence of integeres \(a_i \geq 2\) such that the Euler characteristic \(\chi(\Gamma) := 2-2g - \Sigma_{i=1}^{r} (1-\frac{1}{a_i})\) is negative. In this paper, the asymptotic growth in \(n\) of the number of homomorphisms from \(\Gamma\) to the group \(\mathrm{GL}_n(q)\) is investigated. One of the main results of the paper is as follows.\N\NLet \(A\) be the least common multiple of \(a_1, \ldots a_r\); here \(A=1\) if \(r=0\). It is proved that there exists an absolute constant \(q_0\) such that, besides the finite list of exceptions, for all \(q > q_0\) coprime to \(A\) there exists a \(2A\)-periodic sequence \(c_{q,1}, c_{q,2}, \ldots \) of positive numbers such that \(|\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma, \mathrm{GL}_n(q))| \sim c_{q,n}q^{(1-\chi(\Gamma))n^2}\) uniformly in \(q\) and \(\Gamma\) (Theorem A). In particular, the theorem holds for all Fuchsian groups \(\Gamma\) with Euler characteristic less than \(-\frac{1}{6}\). The list of exceptions of the theorem are given in Proposition 3.2.\N\NIn this paper, there are a number of further asymptotic results on \(|\mathrm{Hom}(\Gamma, \mathrm{GL}_n(q))|\) which are of interest.