Sarnak's trace-set arithmeticity conjecture for cofinite Fuchsian groups

From papers

Let Γ\Gamma be a cofinite Fuchsian group. Its trace set Tr(Γ)\mathrm{Tr}(\Gamma) is the set of traces of elements of Γ\Gamma, defined up to sign. A set AA of real numbers has the bounded clustering property if there is a constant KAK_A such that A[n,n+1]A\cap[n,n+1] has fewer than KAK_A elements for every nZn\in\mathbb Z, and define

Gap(A):=inf{ab:a,bA, ab}.\operatorname{Gap}(A):=\inf\{|a-b|:a,b\in A,\ a\ne b\}.

Sarnak's conjecture. If Tr(Γ)\mathrm{Tr}(\Gamma) satisfies the bounded clustering property, then Γ\Gamma is arithmetic. If Gap(Tr(Γ))>0\operatorname{Gap}(\mathrm{Tr}(\Gamma))>0, then Γ\Gamma is derived from a quaternion algebra.

Luo and Sarnak proved the bounded clustering property for arithmetic Fuchsian groups; the conjectured converses relate trace-set sparsity to arithmeticity and quaternionic origin. The resolution status of these two assertions is not specified in the source.

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Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Yanlong Hao, “On trace set of hyperbolic surfaces and a conjecture of Sarnak and Schmutz”, arXiv:2410.05223 (2025).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2006–2024). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:math/0609477.

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