Spectral correspondences for locally symmetric spaces

In this talk I will describe some relations between the spectral theories of the transfer operator of the geodesic flow and the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a locally symmetric space. Here the Laplace-Beltrami operator is viewed as the quantization of the geodesic flow. After surveying recent results on rank one Riemannian locally symmetric spaces, in particular hyperbolic spaces, I will turn to first results on suitable extensions of the questions for higher rank locally symmetric spaces. Here the focus will be on new results for joint spectra of Weyl chamber flows obtained by microlocal methods. Finally, I will explain some open problems as well as some speculations on possible solutions.