Spectra of Ruelle transfer operators for Axiom A flows (Revised)

For Axiom A flows on basic sets satisfying certain additional conditions we prove strong spectral estimates for Ruelle transfer operators similar to these of Dolgopyat (1998) for geodesic flows on compact surfaces (for general potentials)and transitive Anosov flows on compact manifolds with C^1 jointly non-integrable horocycle foliations (for the Sinai-Bowen-Ruelle potential). Here we deal with general potentials. As is now well known, such results have deep implications in some related areas, e.g. in studying analytic properties of Ruelle zeta functions and partial differential operators, closed orbit counting functions, decay of correlations for Holder continuous potentials.