Spherical means on compact Riemannian manifolds of negative curvature

Abstract

We show that the spherical mean of functions on the unit tangent bundle of a compact manifold of negative curvature converges to a measure containing a vast amount of information about the asymptotic geometry of those manifolds. This measure is related to the unique invariant measure for the strong unstable foliation, as well as the Patterson-Sullivan measure at infinity. It turns out to be invariant under the geodesic flow if and only if the mean curvature of the horospheres is constant. We use this measure in the study of rigidity problems.