We describe a family of arithmetic cross-sections for geodesic flow on compact surfaces of constant negative curvature based on the study of generalized Bowen-Series boundary maps associated to cocompact torsion-free Fuchsian groups and their natural extensions, introduced in [13]. If the boundary map satisfies the short cycle property, i.e., the forward orbits at each discontinuity point coincide after one step, the natural extension map has a global attractor with finite rectangular structure, and the associated arithmetic cross-section is parametrized by the attractor. This construction allows us to represent the geodesic flow as a special flow over a symbolic system of coding sequences. In special cases where the "cycle ends" are discontinuity points of the boundary maps, the resulting symbolic system is sofic. Thus we extend and in some ways simplify several results of Adler-Flatto's 1991 paper [4]. We also compute the measure-theoretic entropy of the boundary maps.

No abstract

Given a closed, orientable, compact surface S of constant negative curvature and genus $g \geq 2$ , we study the measure-theoretic entropy of the Bowen–Series boundary map with respect to its smooth invariant measure. We obtain an explicit formula for the entropy that only depends on the perimeter of the $(8g-4)$ -sided fundamental polygon of the surface S and its genus. Using this, we analyze how the entropy changes in the Teichmüller space of S and prove the following flexibility result: the measure-theoretic entropy takes all values between 0 and a maximum that is achieved on the surface that admits a regular $(8g-4)$ -sided fundamental polygon. We also compare the measure-theoretic entropy to the topological entropy of these maps and show that the smooth invariant measure is not a measure of maximal entropy.