Closed geodesics in the tangent sphere bundle of a hyperbolic three-manifold

Abstract

Let $M$ be an oriented three-dimensional manifold of constant sectional curvature $-1$ and with positive injectivity radius, and $T^1M$ its tangent sphere bundle endowed with the canonical (Sasaki) metric. We describe explicitly the periodic geodesics of $T^1M$ in terms of the periodic geodesics of $M$: For a generic periodic geodesic $(h,v)$ in $T^1M$, $h$ is a periodic helix in $M$, whose axis is a periodic geodesic in $M$; the closing condition on $(h,v)$ is given in terms of the horospherical radius of $h$ and the complex length (length and holonomy) of its axis. As a corollary, we obtain that if two compact oriented hyperbolic three-manifolds have the same complex length spectrum (lengths and holonomies of periodic geodesics, with multiplicities), then their tangent sphere bundles are length isospectral, even if the manifolds are not isometric.