Short geodesics and multiplicities of eigenvalues of hyperbolic surfaces

Abstract: In this paper, we obtain upper bounds on the multiplicity of Laplacian eigenvalues for closed hyperbolic surfaces in terms of the number of short closed geodesics and the genus $g$. For example, we show that if the number of short closed geodesics is sublinear in $g$, then the multiplicity of the first eigenvalue is also sublinear in $g$. This makes new progress on a conjecture by Colin de Verdi`ere in the mid 1980s.