Uniformly distributed orbits of certain flows on homogeneous spaces

Abstract

is non-compact. For a co-compact lattice, this result was strengthened by F/irstenberg [1 lJ proving that every orbit is uniformly distributed with respect to a G-invariant measure. For non-uniform lattices in SL(2, R), using a classification of invariant measures obtained by Dani in [21, Dani and Smillie [31 proved that every non-periodic orbit is uniformly distributed. There are also various results obtained on orbit closures and invariant measures etc. of larger subgroups consisting of unipotent elements, especially the horospherical subgroups. Recently, there was a spurt in the area initiated by Margulis' proof (cf. [151, see also [7]) of Oppenheim conjecture on values of quadratic forms at integral points using the study of unipotent flows. The reader is referred to the survey articles by Dani [41 and Margulis [14J for various related developments. We now note some conjectures expected to hold for orbits of a unipotent flow, namely the U-action on