Congruence subgroups and maximal Riemann surfaces

A global maximal Riemann surface is a surface of constant curvature ?1 with the property that the length of its shortest simple closed geodesic is maximal with respect to all surfaces of the corresponding Teichmüller space. I show that the Riemann surfaces that correspond to the principal congruence subgroups of the modular group are global maximal surfaces. This result provides a strong geometrical reason that the Selberg conjecture, which says that these surfaces have no eigenvalues of the Laplacian in the open interval (0, 1/4), is true.