Counting problems for special-orthogonal Anosov representations

Abstract

For positive integers $p$ and $q$ let $G:=\text{PSO}(p,q)$ be the projective indefinite special-orthogonal group of signature $(p,q)$. We study counting problems in the Riemannian symmetric space $X_G$ of $G$ and in the pseudo-Riemannian hyperbolic space ${\mathbb{H}}^{p,q-1}$. Let $S\subset X_G$ be a totally geodesic copy of $X_{\text{PSO}(p,q-1)}$. We look at the orbit of $S$ under the action of a projective Anosov subgroup of $G$. For certain choices of such a geodesic copy we show that the number of points in this orbit which are at distance at most $t$ from $S$ is finite and asymptotic to a purely exponential function as $t$ goes to infinity. We provide an interpretation of this result in ${\mathbb{H}}^{p,q-1}$, as the asymptotics of the amount of space-like geodesic segments of maximum length $t$ in the orbit of a point.

To appear in Ann. Inst. Fourier. 40 pages, 1 figure