NONVANISHING OF ALGEBRAIC ENTROPY FOR GEOMETRICALLY FINITE GROUPS OF ISOMETRIES OF HADAMARD MANIFOLDS

We prove that any nonelementary geometrically finite group of isometries of a pinched Hadamard manifold has nonzero algebraic entropy in the sense of M. Gromov. In other words it has uniform exponential growth.

Geometrically finite groups, Khintchine-type theorems and Hausdorff dimension

1·1. Groups of the first kind. In [11], Patterson proved a hyperbolic space analogue of Khintchine's theorem on simultaneous Diophantine approximation. In order to state Patterson's theorem, some notation and terminology are needed. Let ‖x‖ denote the usual Euclidean norm of a vector x in k+1, k + 1-dimensional Euclidean space, and let be the unit ball model of k + 1-dimensional hyperbolic space with Poincaré metric ρ. A non-elementary geometrically finite group G acting on Bk + 1 is a discrete subgroup of Möb (Bk+l), the group of orientation preserving Mobius transformations preserving Bk + 1, for which there exists some convex fundamental polyhedron with finitely many faces. Since G is non-elementary, the limit set L(G) of G – the set of limit points in the unit sphere Sk of any orbit of G in Bk+1 – is uncountable. The group G is said to be of the first kind if L(G) = Sk and of the second kind otherwise.