The Smallest Positive Eigenvalue Of Fibered Hyperbolic 3-Manifolds

We study the smallest positive eigenvalue $\lambda_1(M)$ of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ which fibers over the circle, with fiber a closed surface of genus $g\geq 2$. We show the existence of a constant $C>0$ only depending on $g$ so that $\lambda_1(M)\in [C^{-1}/{\rm vol}(M)^2, C\log {\rm vol}(M)/{\rm vol}(M)^{2^{2g-2}/(2^{2g-2}-1)}]$ and that this estimate is essentially sharp. We show that if $M$ is typical or random, then we have $\lambda_1(M)\in [C^{-1}/{\rm vol}(M)^2,C/{\rm vol}(M)^2]$. This rests on a result of independent interest about reccurence properties of axes of random pseudo-Anosov elements.