Counting immersed surfaces in hyperbolic 3-manifolds

Abstract

We count the number of conjugacy classes of maximal, genus g, surface subroups in hyperbolic 3-manifold groups. For any closed hyperbolic 3-manifold, we show that there is an upper bound on this number which grows factorially with g. We also give a class of closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds for which there is a lower bound of the same type.