A random cover of a compact hyperbolic surface has relative spectral gap $\frac{3}{16}-\varepsilon$

Abstract: Let $X$ be a compact connected hyperbolic surface, that is, a closed connected orientable smooth surface with a Riemannian metric of constant curvature -1. For each $n\in\mathbf{N}$, let $X_{n}$ be a random degree-$n$ cover of $X$ sampled uniformly from all degree-$n$ Riemannian covering spaces of $X$. An eigenvalue of $X$ or $X_{n}$ is an eigenvalue of the associated Laplacian operator $\Delta_{X}$ or $\Delta_{X_{n}}$. We say that an eigenvalue of $X_n$ is new if it occurs with greater multiplicity than in $X$. We prove that for any $\varepsilon>0$, with probability tending to 1 as $n\to\infty$, there are no new eigenvalues of $X_n$ below $\frac{3}{16}-\varepsilon$. We conjecture that the same result holds with $\frac{3}{16}$ replaced by $\frac{1}{4}$.