A survey of some arithmetic applications of ergodic theory in negative curvature

This paper is a survey of some arithmetic applications of techniques in the geometry and ergodic theory of negatively curved Riemannian manifolds, focusing on the joint works of the authors. We describe Diophantine approximation results of real numbers by quadratic irrational ones, and we discuss various results on the equidistribution in $\mathbb R$, $\mathbb C$ and in the Heisenberg groups of arithmetically defined points. We explain how these results are consequences of equidistribution and counting properties of common perpendiculars between locally convex subsets in negatively curved orbifolds, proven using dynamical and ergodic properties of their geodesic flows. This exposition is based on lectures at the conference "Chaire Jean Morlet: G\'eom\'etrie et syst\`emes dynamiques", at the CIRM, Luminy, 2014. We thank B. Hasselblatt for his strong encouragements to write this survey.Comment: 31 pages, 15 figure

Weakly commensurable groups, with applications to differential geometry

The article contains a survey of our results on weakly commensurable arithmetic and general Zariski-dense subgroups, length-commensurable and isospectral locally symmetric spaces and of related problems in the theory of semi-simple agebraic groups. We have included a discussion of very recent results and conjectures on absolutely almost simple algebraic groups having the same maximal tori and finite-dimensional division algebras having the same maximal subfields.Comment: Improved exposition, updated bibliography. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1212.121