Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2009/ii/paper-2/3f/solution

In the upper-half-plane model, with metric , the hyperbolic geodesics are vertical lines and semicircles orthogonal to the real boundary. Two geodesics with disjoint endpoints and no intersection are ultraparallel and have a common perpendicular . To construct it, send one geodesic to the imaginary axis by an isometry. The second then has endpoints after a possible reflection. The semicircle centered at zero with radius is perpendicular to the imaginary axis and to the second circle: its squared radius plus equals , the orthogonality condition for the two circles.
Let the intersection points of with the given geodesics have signed arclength coordinates on . Each hyperbolic reflection preserves and restricts there to : the perpendicular intersection point is fixed and the tangent direction along is reversed. Thus their composition restricts to
The displacement is nonzero since the two perpendicular intersection points differ. Its th iterate translates by , which is never zero for . The composite is a hyperbolic translation of infinite order. The assumption excluding a common endpoint ensures the common perpendicular used here exists.

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