A Generalization of the prime geodesic theorem to counting conjugacy classes of free subgroups

The classical prime geodesic theorem (PGT) gives an asymptotic formula (as x tends to infinity) for the number of closed geodesics with length at most x on a hyperbolic manifold M. Closed geodesics correspond to conjugacy classes of π₁(M) = Γ where Γ is a lattice in G = SO(n,1). The theorem can be rephrased in the following format. Let be the space of representations of into Γ modulo conjugation by Γ. is defined similarly. Let be the projection map. The PGT provides a volume form vol on such that for sequences of subsets {B _t }, satisfying certain explicit hypotheses, |π⁻¹(B _t )| is asymptotic to vol(B _t ). We prove a statement having a similar format in which is replaced by a free group of finite rank under the additional hypothesis that n = 2 or 3.