The convergence properties of cycle expanded periodic orbit expressions for
the spectra of classical and semiclassical time evolution operators have been
studied for the open three disk billiard. We present evidence that both the
classical and the semiclassical Selberg zeta function have poles. Applying a
Pad\'{e} approximation on the expansions of the full Euler products, as well as
on the individual dynamical zeta functions in the products, we calculate the
leading poles and the zeros of the improved expansions with the first few poles
removed. The removal of poles tends to change the simple linear exponential
convergence of the Selberg zeta functions to an exp{−n3/2} decay in the
classical case and to an exp{−n2} decay in the semiclassical case. The
leading poles of the jth dynamical zeta function are found to equal the
leading zeros of the j+1th one: However, in contrast to the zeros, which are
all simple, the poles seem without exception to be {\em double}\/. The poles
are therefore in general {\em not}\/ completely cancelled by zeros, which has
earlier been suggested. The only complete cancellations occur in the classical
Selberg zeta function between the poles (double) of the first and the zeros
(squared) of the second dynamical zeta function. Furthermore, we find strong
indications that poles are responsible for the presence of spurious zeros in
periodic orbit quantized spectra and that these spectra can be greatly improved
by removing the leading poles, e.g.\ by using the Pad\'{e} technique.Comment: CYCLER Paper 93mar00