Norms of geodesic restrictions for eigenfunctions on hyperbolic surfaces and representation theory

Abstract

We consider restrictions along closed geodesics and geodesic circles for eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a compact hyperbolic Riemann surface. We obtain a non-trivial bound on the L^2-norm of such restrictions as the eigenvalue tends to infinity. We use methods from the theory of automorphic functions and in particular the uniqueness of invariant functionals on irreducible unitary representations of PGL(2,R).