Exponential mixing for the geodesic flow on hyperbolic three-manifolds

Abstract

We give a short and direct proof of exponential mixing of geodesic flows on compact hyperbolic three-manifolds with respect to the Liouville measure. This complements earlier results of Collet-Epstein-Gallovotti, Moore, and Ratner for hyperbolic surfaces. Furthermore, since the analysis is even easier in three dimensions than in two dimensions (because of the absence of discrete series and the simplicity of the zonal spherical functions in this case), this apparently gives the simplest example of a flow with exponential mixing.