Horocycle flows for laminations by hyperbolic Riemann surfaces and Hedlund's theorem

Matilde Martínez, Shigenori Matsumoto, Alberto Verjovsky

Published 2007-11-14, updated 2015-04-15Version 4

We study the dynamics of the geodesic and horocycle flows of the unit tangent bundle $(\hat M, T^1\mathcal{F})$ of a compact minimal lamination $(M,\mathcal F)$ by negatively curved surfaces. We give conditions under which the action of the affine group generated by the joint action of these flows is minimal, and examples where this action is not minimal. In the first case, we prove that if $\mathcal F$ has a leaf which is not simply connected, the horocyle flow is topologically transitive.