a) Weyl's unitary trick implies there are no nontrivial irreducible finite dimensional unitary representations of SL(2,R).  This is basically the opposite of SO(3).

b) [Wikipedia][1] has a classification of all unitary irreps.  An irreducible representation given as a space of functions on H can be viewed as a massive particle state in relativistic QM on R^(1,2).

c) I think you get real-analytic Eisenstein series and discrete series.  Eisenstein series form a continuous spectrum, while discrete series give modular forms.  You can find more in Gelbart's book "Automorphic forms on adele groups"

d) Same thing, except the Eisenstein series involve a summation over a smaller range of cosets of translation, and the modular forms are invariant under a smaller group.  I am told that the Maass forms and holomorphic forms for congruence groups that I mentioned only give a countable collection of unitary representations, while the principal series has a continuous parameter.


  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_theory_of_SL2(R)