Symbolic Dynamics for the Geodesic Flow on Two-dimensional Hyperbolic Good Orbifolds

Abstract

We construct cross sections for the geodesic flow on the orbifolds $\Gamma\backslash H$ which are tailor-made for the requirements of transfer operator approaches to Maass cusp forms and Selberg zeta functions. Here, $H$ denotes the hyperbolic plane and $\Gamma$ is a nonuniform geometrically finite Fuchsian group (not necessarily a lattice, not necessarily arithmetic) which satisfies an additional condition of geometric nature. The construction of the cross sections is uniform, geometric, explicit and algorithmic.