Divergent geodesics, ambiguous closed geodesics and the binary additive divisor problem

We give an asymptotic formula as $t\to+\infty$ for the number of common perpendiculars of length at most $t$ between two divergent geodesics or a divergent geodesic and a compact locally convex subset in negatively curved locally symmetric spaces with exponentially mixing geodesic flow, presenting a surprising non-purely exponential growth. We apply this result to count ambiguous geodesics in the modular orbifold recovering results of Sarnak, and to confirm and extend a conjecture of Motohashi on the binary additive divisor problem in imaginary quadratic number fields.