On the Prime Geodesic Theorem for Non-Compact Riemann Surfaces ()
1. Introduction
The Selberg trace formula, introduced by A. Selberg in 1956, describes the spectrum of the hyperbolic Laplacian in terms of geometric data involving the lengths of geodesics on a Riemann surface. Motivated by analogy between this trace formula and the explicit formulas of number theory relating the zeroes of the Riemann zeta function to prime numbers, Selberg [1] introduced a zeta function whose analytic properties are encoded in the Selberg trace formula. By focusing on the Selberg zeta function, H. Huber ( [2] , p. 386; [3] , p. 464), proved an analogue of the prime number theorem for compact Rie-
mann surfaces with the error term
that agrees with Selberg’s one.
Using basically the same method as in [4] , D. Hejhal ( [5] , p. 475), established also the prime geodesic theorem for non-compact Riemann surfaces with the remainder
. However, in the compact case there exist several different proofs (see,
B. Randol [6] , p. 245; P. Buser [7] , p. 257, Th. 9.6.1; M. Avdispahić and L. Smajlović
[8] , Th. 3.1) that give the remainder
. Thanks to new integral repre-
sentations of the logarithmic derivative of the Selberg zeta function (cf. [9] , p. 185; [10] , p. 128), M. Avdispahić and L. Smajlović ( [11] , p. 13) were in position to improve
error term in a non-compact, finite volume case up to
.
Whereas the authors in [8] and [11] approached the prime number theorem in various settings via explicit formulas for the Jorgenson-Lang fundamental class of functions, our main goal is to obtain this improvement for non-compact Riemann surfaces with cusps following a more direct method of B. Randol [6] .
2. Preliminaries
Let X be a non-compact Riemann surface regarded as a quotient
of the upper half-plane
by a finitely-generated Fuchsian group
of the first kind, containing
cusps. Let
denote the fundamental region of
. We shall assume that the fundamental region
of
has a finite non-Euclidean area
. We put

and denote by v the multiplier system of the weight
for
. Let
be an irreducible
unitary representation on
and
,
. For an r dimensional vector space V over
we consider an essentially self-adjoint operator
![]()
on the space
of all twice continuously differentiable functions
, such that f and
are square integrable on
, and satisfy the equality
![]()
The operator
has the unique self-adjoint extension
to the space
, a dense subspace of
. Let
,
be the set of parabolic transformations corresponding to
cusps of
.
does not depend on the choice of a representative of the parabolic class
and can be considered as a matrix from
. By
we will denote the multiplicity of 1 as an eigen-value of the matrix
, and
will be the degree of singularity of W. We mention that oper-
ator
has both the discrete and continuous spectrum in the case
, and only the discrete spectrum in the case
. The discrete spectrum will be denoted as
(
). The continuous spectrum is expressed through zeros (or equivalently poles) of the hyperbolic scattering determinant (see, [12] ).
3. Selberg Zeta Function
Let
denotes the set of
-conjugacy classes of a primitive hyperbolic element
in
, and
denotes the set of
-conjugacy classes of a hyperbolic element P in
that satisfy property
. Assume that
. We define the Selberg zeta function associated to the pair (
) by
![]()
is absolutely convergent for
. Analytic considerations given in ( [5] , pp. 499-501) yield that the Selberg zeta function in this setting satisfies the functional equation
![]()
with the fudge factor
(1)
Here,
denotes the hyperbolic scattering determinant. It can be represented in the form
![]()
where the coefficients
and
depend on the group
(see, [5] , p. 437). Here,
denotes the degree of singularity of W (see Section 2). An explicit expression for the fudge factor
in the Equation (1) is given in ( [5] , p. 501, Equation (5.10)).
The logarithmic derivative of the Selberg zeta function
is given by
![]()
where
denotes the norm of the class P and
for a primi-
tive element
such that
for some
. We will omit the indices in
in the sequel.
4. Counting Functions ![]()
Lemma 1. For
,
![]()
where
for a primitive element
such that
for some
.
Proof.
![]()
We shall spend the rest of this section to derive a representation of
in the form (11) bellow. We choose not to write it in a separate statement because of the length of expressions involved. However, it will serve as a base for the proof of the prime geodesic theorem in Section 5.
Let us recall the following theorem given in ( [13] , p. 51, Th. 40).
Theorem 1. If the Dirichlet’s series
is summable
for
and
,
, then
(2)
By Lemma 1,
![]()
We have,
![]()
Therefore, substituting ω = 1,
, and hence
,
in (2), we get
![]()
Then,
(3)
Now, put
![]()
and
![]()
for
. Using ( [14] , p. 12, Th. 1.3.5), it is easy to get that
(4)
For
, let
,
, be the zeros of
in
. Let
,
denote all zeros of the hyperbolic scattering determinant in
.
Assume
,
,
, where
and
for
,
. Following ( [5] , p. 468), we may also assume
,
, where,
,
are the zeros of the Selberg zeta function
for each zero
,
,
, of the hyperbolic scattering determinant f. Let
be a large constant such that
,
,
. We put
.
Without loss of generality we may assume that
,
,
. Let
. By the Cauchy residue theorem one has
(5)
and
(6)
Arguing as in [5] (p. 474) and [4] (pp. 105-108), we easily find that the sum of the
first eight integrals on the right hand side of (5) is
. Similarly, taking into account that
is bounded for
, we obtain that the sum of the first eight integrals on the right hand side of (6) is
. Following [5] (p. 474) and [4] (p. 85,
Prop. 5.7), we obtain that the ninth resp. the third integral on the right hand side of (5) resp. (6) are
. Now, if we take
, (5) and (6) will give us
(7)
and
(8)
Bearing in mind location of the poles of
given in ( [5] , p. 439, Th. 2.16; or [5] , p. 498, Th. 5.3) and the fact that
, we may assume without loss of generality that
![]()
Calculating residues and passing to the limit
in (7) and (8) we get
(9)
and
(10)
The implied constants on the right sides of (9) and (10) depend solely on
, m and W. With
in (3),
in (4), Equations (4), (3), (9) and (10) yield
(11)
where the first sum ranges over the finite set of poles s of
![]()
with
,
, the second sum ranges over the set of poles s of the same functions with
, and the third sum ranges over the finite set of their poles s with
.
5. Prime Geodesic Theorem
In our setting, the prime geodesic counting function is defined by
![]()
where the sum on the right is taken over all primitive hyperbolic classes
with respect to
(see, [5] , p. 473, [11] , p. 13).
Theorem 2. For
, the formula
![]()
holds true, where,
for
, and the implied constant depends solely on
, m and W.
Proof. Following [6] (p. 245) and [15] (p. 11), for a positive number
, we define the second difference operator
by
(12)
Here, d is a constant which will be fixed later. By the mean value theorem, we have
(13)
for some
. It is easy to verify that
(14)
Reasoning as in [5] (p. 475), we may assume without loss of generality that
is non-decreasing. Hence, (12) implies
(15)
Since (14) holds true, one can easily deduce that
,
,
,
,
,
,
. Thus, (13) and finiteness of the sums contained in
on the right hand side (11) yield
(16)
Similarly,
(17)
In order to estimate
, we will first consider
![]()
By (14) it is evident that
(18)
On the other hand, the mean value theorem (13) gives us
(19)
Let
be the number of roots of
on the critical line
in the interval
. It is known ( [5] , p. 477, Th. 3.8) that
. Taking
and following ( [3] , pp. 463-464; [6] , p. 246), we use (19) resp. (18) in the sums over
,
,
resp. sum over
,
(below) to get
![]()
Thus,
(20)
Similarly,
(21)
Observe that
(see, [5] , p. 437, Prop. 2.13). Thus, application of
to the third and the fourth sum in
gives us
.
Let us write
(22)
where
denotes the sum of the first four sums in
and
denotes the sum of the last four sums in
. Now, Equations (11), (16), (17), (20), (21) and (22) give us
(23)
Putting
,
, the Equation (23) becomes
(24)
Since the left sides of Equations (20), (21) are
for such choice of M and d, we get
. Now, it is obvious that
. Finally, Equation (24) gives us
![]()
Returning to (15), we conclude that inequality
![]()
holds true. Following ( [15] , p. 11), we analogously obtain that
![]()
Hence,
(25)
Arguing as in [5] (p. 475) and [4] (p. 113), one immediately sees that equality (25) proves the theorem.
Acknowledgements
We thank the Editor and the referee for their comments.