It occurred to me that a subgroup of the modular group $\Gamma$ is a congruence subgroup iff it contains a subgroup of the form $\Gamma(N)$, while a subgroup of a general topological group is open iff it contains an open subgroup. This suggests making a topology on the modular group $\Gamma$ with the subgroups $\Gamma(N)$ as a basis of open neighborhoods of the origin so that $\Gamma$ becomes a topological group. It would then follow that a subgroup of $\Gamma$ is a congruence subgroup iff it is open.

Furthermore, for any $\gamma \in \Gamma$ not equal to the identity, there exists $N$ such that $\gamma \notin \Gamma(N)$, so this topology is Hausdorff, even totally disconnected.

I was inspired in part by [this thread][1] and looked at [this paper][2] but could not find anything about this idea.

Has anyone considered this topology? Does it provide insight into the problem of determining whether a group is a congruence subgroup?


  [1]: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/20929/distinguishing-congruence-subgroups-of-the-modular-group
  [2]: http://www.ams.org/journals/proc/1996-124-05/S0002-9939-96-03496-X/S0002-9939-96-03496-X.pdf