Mixing asymptotics for time-changes of horocycle flows

Abstract

Mixing-via-shearing is a powerful and versatile method for establishing mixing properties of smooth parabolic flows. In its quantitative form, it provides upper bounds on the decay of correlations for sufficiently smooth observables. Despite its wide applicability, determining the exact rates of mixing for a given smooth parabolic flow remains notoriously difficult. Apart from the classical horocycle flow, no examples are known where polynomial asymptotics, or sharp lower bounds, hold. In this paper, we address this question for smooth time-changes of horocycle flows on compact hyperbolic surfaces. Our approach relies on a refined version of the mixing-via-shearing method which leverages on a precise description of the ergodic integrals for horocycle flows, in particular of the regularity of the coefficients appearing in their asymptotic expansions. Using this method, we prove polynomial upper bounds on the decay of correlations for smooth observables that match the optimal rates originally obtained by Ratner for the standard horocycle flow. Furthermore, in the presence of a spectral gap below $1/4$, we establish exact polynomial asymptotics, mirroring the classical behavior of the horocycle flow.