Abstract. We obtain an essential spectral gap for n-dimensional convex co-compact hyperbolic manifolds with the dimension δ of the limit set close to n−1 2 . The size of the gap is expressed using the additive energy of stereographic projections of the limit set. This additive energy can in turn be estimated in terms of the constants in Ahlfors-David regularity of the limit set. Our proofs use new microlocal methods, in particular a notion of a fractal uncertainty principle.In this paper we study essential spectral gaps for convex co-compact hyperbolic quotients M = Γ\H n . To formulate our result in the simplest setting, consider n = 2 and take the Selberg zeta function [Bo07, (10.1)] ), where δ ∈ [0, 1] is the dimension of the limit set of the group (see (5.2)). Therefore Z M has finitely many singularities in {Im λ > − max(0,, Naud [Na] obtained the stronger statement that Z M has finitely many singularities in {Im λ > −β} for some β strictly greater than 1 2 − δ. Naud's result, generalized to higher dimensional quotients by Stoyanov [St11], is based on the method of Dolgopyat [Do] and does not specify the size of the improvement. Our first result in particular gives explicit estimates on the value of β when δ = 1 2 : Theorem 1. Let M = Γ\H 2 be a convex co-compact hyperbolic surface. Then for each ε > 0, the function Z M has finitely many singularities in {Im λ > −β + ε}, where β = 3 8 1 2 − δ + β E 16 , β E := δ exp − K(1 − δ) −28 (1 + log 14 C) .