Limits of canonical forms on towers of Riemann surfaces (Q782618)

Let \(S\) be a Riemann surface of genus \(g \geq 2\), and consider an ascending sequence \(\{S_n \rightarrow S\}\) of finite Galois covers converging to the universal cover. Then, \textit{D. A. Kazhdan} proved in [in: Lie Groups Represent., Proc. Summer Sch. Bolyai Janos math. Soc., Budapest 1971, 151--217 (1975; Zbl 0308.14007)] that the \((1,1)\)-forms on \(S\) inherited from canonical forms via \(\{S_n \rightarrow S\}\), converge uniformly to a multiple of the hyperbolic \((1,1)\)-form of the universal cover. In the present paper the authors generalize the result of Kazhdan, by replacing the universal cover with any infinite Galois cover. Their main result is Theorem A (Theorem 5.4), according to which if \(S'\) is any infinite Galois cover of \(S\), and \(\{S_n \rightarrow S\}\) is a sequence of finite Galois covers converging to \(S'\), then the sequence of \((1,1)\)-forms on \(S\) induced from the canonical forms on \(S_n\) converges uniformly to the \((1,1)\)-form induced from the canonical form on \(S'\). In order to prove it, Theorem 5.3 gives a weaker result, on the strong convergence of the associated measures attached to the \((1,1)\)-forms. Then, the uniform convergence of the forms follows from an analytic argument. For proving that Theorem 5.3, a Gauss-Bonnet type result (Theorem B) is relevant. Results on metric graphs, very close to Theorems A and B, were obtained by the second and third listed authors in [Invent. Math. 215, No. 3, 819--862 (2019; Zbl 1440.14284)].