Effective counting in sphere packings

Abstract

Given a Zariski-dense, discrete group, $\Gamma$, of isometries acting on $(n + 1)$-dimensional hyperbolic space, we use spectral methods to obtain a sharp asymptotic formula for the growth rate of certain $\Gamma$-orbits. In particular, this allows us to obtain a best-known effective error rate for the Apollonian and (more generally) Kleinian sphere packing counting problems, that is, counting the number of spheres in such with radius bounded by a growing parameter. Our method extends the method of Kontorovich [Kon09], which was itself an extension of the orbit counting method of Lax-Phillips [LP82], in two ways. First, we remove a compactness condition on the discrete subgroups considered via a technical cut-off and smoothing operation. Second, we develop a coordinate system which naturally corresponds to the inversive geometry underlying the sphere counting problem, and give structure theorems on the arising Casimir operator and Haar measure in these coordinates.