ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF ZEROS OF THE DERIVATIVE OF SELBERG’S ZETA FUNCTION ASSOCIATED TO FINITE VOLUME RIEMANN SURFACES

We study the distribution of zeros of the derivative of the Selberg zeta function associated to a noncompact, finite volume hyperbolic Riemann surface $M$. Actually, we study the zeros of $(Z_{M}H_{M})^{\prime }$, where $Z_{M}$ is the Selberg zeta function and $H_{M}$ is the Dirichlet series component of the scattering matrix, both associated to an arbitrary finite volume hyperbolic Riemann surface $M$. Our main results address finiteness of number of zeros of $(Z_{M}H_{M})^{\prime }$ in the half-plane $\operatorname{Re}(s)<1/2$, an asymptotic count for the vertical distribution of zeros, and an asymptotic count for the horizontal distance of zeros. One realization of the spectral analysis of the Laplacian is the location of the zeros of $Z_{M}$, or, equivalently, the zeros of $Z_{M}H_{M}$. Our analysis yields an invariant $A_{M}$ which appears in the vertical and weighted vertical distribution of zeros of $(Z_{M}H_{M})^{\prime }$, and we show that $A_{M}$ has different values for surfaces associated to two topologically equivalent yet different arithmetically defined Fuchsian groups. We view this aspect of our main theorem as indicating the existence of further spectral phenomena which provides an additional refinement within the set of arithmetically defined Fuchsian groups.