Equidistribution and Counting for orbits of geometrically finite hyperbolic groups

Abstract

Let G be the identity component of SO(n,1), acting linearly on a finite dimensional real vector space V. Consider a vector w_0 in V such that the stabilizer of w_0 is a symmetric subgroup of G or the stabilizer of the line Rw_0 is a parabolic subgroup of G. For any non-elementary discrete subgroup Gamma of G with w_0Gamma discrete, we compute an asymptotic formula for the number of points in w_0Gamma of norm at most T, provided that the Bowen-Margulis-Sullivan measure on the associated hyperbolic manifold and the Gamma skinning size of w_0 are finite. The main ergodic ingredient in our approach is the description for the limiting distribution of the orthogonal translates of a totally geodesically immersed closed submanifold of Gamma\H^n. We also give a criterion on the finiteness of the Gamma skinning size of w_0 for Gamma geometrically finite.