English

A Poincar\'e section for horocycle flow on the space of lattices

Dynamical Systems 2012-07-24 v2 Geometric Topology Number Theory

Abstract

We construct a Poincar\'e section for the horocycle flow on the modular surface SL(2,R)/SL(2,Z)SL(2, \R)/SL(2, \Z), and study the associated first return map, which coincides with a transformation (the {\it BCZ map}) defined by Boca-Cobeli-Zaharescu. We classify ergodic invariant measures for this map and prove equidistribution of periodic orbits. As corollaries, we obtain results on the average depth of cusp excursions and on the distribution of gaps for Farey sequences and slopes of lattice vectors.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.6597,
  title  = {A Poincar\'e section for horocycle flow on the space of lattices},
  author = {Jayadev S. Athreya and Yitwah Cheung},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.6597},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

39 pages, 12 figures, some updates and added references. The large figure on page 3 has been changed to be more manageable. Submitted to Inventiones Mathematicae